


Tongue Tied

by InsominiacArrest



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol, Bad Flirting, Beaches, Disaster Lesbians, F/F, Flirting, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-07-05
Packaged: 2019-03-29 11:51:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 35,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13926573
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsominiacArrest/pseuds/InsominiacArrest
Summary: Hana Song does not know how to meet girls, Hana Song does not know how flirting worksShe begins with blowing stuff up, she ends with trying that againBrigette is set to join overwatch, defend the weak, and fix broken things. None of these things really go as plannedmytumblr





	1. A Bad Case of Feelings

There are several ways to meet girls. Hana Song could not name a single one of them.

Compliments? Candies? Bees?  
  
Her best equivalent of meeting girls was going on online chatrooms and promoting lipstick brands that sponsored her. That usually got a couple hundred fans going ‘has the lipstick touched your lips? I’ll buy it then!!!’ with enough little faces to make a second emojis movie.

Was fighting an evil man that could turn into shadows a date?

  
God, she hoped so.

A girl around her age with a high ponytail and a heavy set of gleaming armor deflected an incoming shower of debris from above. “Hmph,” the girl grunts and held up the falling wall of the building, gritting her teeth and digging her heels in. Dirt was streaked over her nose and a bed sweat ran down her forehead. She glanced over at Hana’s mech, “you alright in there?”

Hana’s bubblegum popped in her face.

\-------------

Attempt One: Night Caps

Overwatch’s bunker base in Beijing was a little more of a box with a warehouse attached to it. The warehouse was for weapons storage, the box was for everyone else.

It was rumored to have the nicest mattresses and a better stocked fridge then any of the other overnight bases popping up as Overwatch got its footing back. Or at least, it had more blankets and a cappuccino machine in the kitchen.

Of course, the walls were still stained, the floorboards creaked, the distant city next door blared like it was on surround sound and it had one cramped public room for gathering.

It was still said to be the best place to meet any given Overwatch member by chance. It allegedly had HBO on one of the TVs.

Hana twiddles her thumbs absently as she stares up at the ceiling and repeats stats to herself, Starcraft II player stats to be exact. She didn’t really have much time to play herself anymore, but she still liked to keep tabs on which of her records was still in place. Most of them were.

Her fingers itch by her sides to grab her phone and start live-tweeting her thoughts.

‘Waiting for someone to show up #anxiety lol’

‘Do people bring flowers to first meetings? Is that a thing? @ me babes’

‘Aklfdjajdflk’

She, however, resists the urge to start scrolling any social media, she needed to be fresh, clear, focused.

She starts to tap her fingers on the wooden table as the minutes ticked away, it was almost 1am. Time was pretty irrelevant to most of them by now, but Hana was starting to feel like she had entered a ghost dimension.

She perks up when she hears a series of thumping footsteps down the narrow hallway. She sits up completely straight and tries to look preoccupied with the ends of her hair.

The sliding door glides aside and she bites her inner cheek, her starts jiggling her leg up and down. _Fancy meeting you here, nice night for uh… um, a hello._

A man in a cowboy hat stalks through the door, Hana deflates like a popped balloon, “goddammit.” She curses to herself fiercely.

Jesse McCree looks over at her curiously, still smelling of cigarette smoke and dust. “Well, I guess I’ve had worse welcomes.”

Hana shakes her head and starts mumbling to herself in Korean so the American might ignore her again, she was busy, busy going through what felt like second puberty. The type that made your brain stupid.

“You have a problem kid?” McCree walked to the cappuccino machine and stares at it for a very long second before reaching for the busted old coffee maker next to it.

Hana put her chin in her hands and propped herself up on the table, she sighs, “Never.”  
  
He chuckled to himself dully, “you should sleep. What are you, sixteen? Twelve? Kids need sleep.”  
  
“Oh shut it,” she glares at him, “you know I’m nineteen, I sent everyone in overwatch invitations to my 20th last week.”  
  
“Oof,” he pours water into the little chamber, “grumpy. Alright.”  
  
Hana shakes her head, “I was waiting for someone.”  
  
McCree leans over the counter, “I assume it was not my pretty face.”  
  
Hana frowns for a second and then tilts her head to the side, “do you know…” She clears her throat, “do you know of any new Overwatch member?” She already knew there was one, her heart thuds a little in her chest anyway. Like an idiot.

McCree shrugs, “I don’t even remember the current members of this posse. Always coming back from the dead and then dying again, I can’t keep ‘em all straight. I just call everyone by their hair color now.”  
  
Hana rolled her eyes and shook the table a little bit, “I’m serious. Come on.”  
  
McCree focuses on her for a moment, he turns around to finish putting the coffee into the filter (a good army’s worth) and then turning on the machine. It gives a little rattling wheeze and starts bubbling.

“Well brown,” he says easily, “I saw Winston messin’ around with the paperwork earlier, yesterday I think. Or today? It’s all the same.”  
  
Hana blinks, “We have paperwork?”  
  
“That’s what I said.” He takes out two mugs from the top shelf, “and he was organizing those little floating faces on the map.”  
  
Hana sits up completely straight and digs her nails into her hand a little bit, “and?”  
  
He shrugs, “New face hovering over Sweden.”  
  
Hana rocks back and forth slightly, “Sweden? That’s cool, yeah, cool. They sell like… tables. And fish.”  
  
McCree chuckles, “alright then.”  
  
“Did you see her name?”  
  
“You’re waiting for someone at 2 in the morning in this one-horse bunker-”  
  
“One horse bunker? Can we not.”  
  
“-And you don’t even know their name?”  
  
Hana frowns pointedly, “I could know her name. You could tell me her name.”  
  
The little coffee pot on the counter started gave a sharp ‘bring!’ and McCree turned around to pour two cups out.

“You want sugar?” She kinda did.

“Nah.”  
  
He brings her over her black coffee and Hana ignores her own little voice complaining in her head. She doodles a little rabbit pattern on the wooden table, “sooooo, name?” She tries again.

“Jesse M-”  
  
“I swear to God.”  
  
He laughs, “Brid-gate? Brigitte, something B-related.”  
  
“Brigitte,” Hana sits up straight, “Yeah. Okay.” She blinks, “Brigitte.”  
  
“I didn’t even say if that was the right one,” he pushes her coffee over to her and she catches it with both hands.  
  
“That’s the one that feels right.”  
  
“You got a feeling about this?” McCree was chugging the cup and Hana could see the shadows under his eyes. Shadows that were taking on a life of their own, making appointments, taking phone calls, digging their own graves out. Those type.

Hana just nods, “Yeah,” she looks away before sipping her tar-black drink, “I got feeling about it.”  
  
She doesn’t really sleep for the rest of the night, but she does learn that Brigitte was listed as an ‘engineer’ in the database. She fixed stuff.

Hana repeats stats to herself and things that could be broken.

\-------------------

Attempt two: Blowing the Fuck up

  
This was a bad idea. This had to be a bad idea.

That didn’t stop her from standing in the middle of the lot and holding the little fuse in her hand like prayer beads. She had made the seventeen-hour flight over to Manilla to visit the engineering wing of Overwatch.

Hana had to do a little prying to find the map of all the bases (it was on a ‘need to know’ basis while Overwatch sorted out it’s hacker problems. And double-agent problems. It’s general problems.) But snooping in the name of flirtation and Second Puberty was a new found skill-set of hers.

Also, Winston told her he’d give her the spots if she stopped hanging around his office like a horror movie ghost. She said okay to that.

It was bridging on summer in Manilla and Hana could feel herself sweating through her suit, which wasn’t actually possible since it was water and heat resistant. But it still felt like the seventh grade and she might as well have pit-stains.

She leaned up against the nearest giant metal box filled with spare parts and sticks another piece of bubblegum in her mouth. She waits.

Hana half-expects to meet every other member of Overwatch that day, after all, she figured love was not her luckiest category. She was almost twenty and she had never even been on a date yet (cyber-ones to cyber cafes didn’t count in her head right now).

She sees Torbjorn pass with a giant metal arm of something thrown over his shoulder. He was muttering to himself and shaking his head at the ground. He looked distracted so Hana did not have to activate protocol: interacting with older adults I can’t call ‘lard-faces’ or make small talk with about sims 5.

He passes with loaded heavy foot-steps and Hana feels a knob of despair twist in her gut. Maybe there was only old men and lesbians already in relationships in Overwatch.

She stares at the ground for a solid five minutes.

“Can I help you?”  
  
Hana jumps and it’s only her rabbit-like reflexes that stop her from toppling over. “Huh?”

A young woman in a black tank-top and heavy cargo pants peered around the corner of the storage bin Hana was leaning on. She had full lips, round cheeks, an open curious face, Hana looks both ways to make sure traffic wasn’t about to hit her like some sort of Freudian loony-toons cartoon.

The woman blinks again, her eyebrows raised and mouth making a little ‘o’, she takes a step forward, “are you… you’re another hero, aren’t you?”  
  
Hana stands up straight and goes to clear her voice, she puts a hand behind her back like she’s at military training again. She takes a deep breath and lifts her chin, her voice croaks, “Yeh.”  
  
A warm smile spreads across Brigitte’s lips, she tosses an oil-stained rag she was holding over her shoulder, “I saw you!” She beams, “I mean, not in…a ‘saw you’ way! But in a… fighting. With you. Way.” Brigitte shifts from side to side, “Gosh, I should be introducing myself, I’ve been meaning to meet more heroes.”  
  
She puts her hand out and then hesitates, Hana stares at her long-callused fingers. “Or… um?” Brigitte looks Hana up and down and then appears to struggle with a short bow.

Hana snorts and puts her hand out to shake Brigitte’s, “D Va.” She wished her voiced hadn’t cracked and made it sound like a question.  
  
Brigitte was still smiling, “Brigitte Lindholm.”

They shake and it feels like something people do when they are lost at the grocery store, kinda just feel your way around with a couple back and forths. Hana wouldn’t call it her best hand shake.

“You can… Hana Song.”  
  
“Hmm?” Brigitte was wiping grease off her nose- mostly by smearing it around some more.

Hana tries again, “Hana Song, you can call me.”  
  
“Oh cool,” Brigitte’s face lit up, “I love your mech.”  
  
Hana puts her hands behind her back, “Thank you,” she searches the air, “I got it from the government.” Brigitte laughs at that in surprise, Hana looks around quickly, “I love your…” She looks around desperately, “tool box?”

Brigitte looks around in confusion and then holds up a large metal box with wrenches and iron bolts in it and a little white face painted on the side. It was a small white cat face.

Hana blinks at the design, “do you like cats?”  
  
Brigitte leans forward, “I love cats!” She bounces on her heels, “I would put them on my armor too if I could, like um, your rabbit?”  
  
“Yeah. Rabbit.” Hana was tracing the grease stain on her nose like a lifeline to Valhalla.  
  
“But my godfather said it wasn’t exactly the type of warriors we are.”  
  
“Oh,” Hana scratched at her wrist, she tilts her head to the side, “why not?”  
  
Brigitte shrugs, “I dunno. Maybe sometime I will make my armor pink and with cat-ears,” she laughs, “and blow it up somewhere.”  
  
Hana’s mouth was still open a little bit, she was breathing through her nose, was she funny too? As well as having arms that could lift the Pacific Ocean and toss it into the Atlantic, Hana was sweating.

She laughs a little bit, “You can leave the blowing up to me.” She gently punches her shoulder, she hoped in a friendly way.  
  
Brigitte grins slowly, “You should be careful. It looks, uh, fiery.”  
  
Hana snickers, “it’s all in the adrenaline rush. The fires half the fun.”  
  
Brigitte’s eyes go wide, “do you have padding in that little suit you wear? I mean the one, that, um, thin. Purple.”  
  
Hana snorts, “I play to win,” she winks, “don’t need a helmet if your already hitting homeruns.” Did Swedes play baseball? She hoped so.

Brigitte’s mouth was hanging open a little bit, her eyes wide. Hana did not know what that meant. “Are you sure? I feel like I could make you s-“

“Brigitte!” Hana hears Torbjorn call out, “what do I say about eating?”

“Dad,” Brigitte looks both ways, “Right, I should go. But,” she examines Hana, “did you need help with something Miss Song? I totally forgot to ask.”

“Oh,” Hana looks her up and down and then reaches behind herself, fiddling with a small red button just as her mind raced, “do I need help with anything?”  
  
“Yeah,” Brigitte blinks, “I know I’m new to Overwatch, but if you ever need help fixing anything I can come by and take a look at it-”

_Brrrccchk_

Hana cringes at a distant blast as she presses down on the little button in her hands, thinking fast and hoping her mech wasn’t too close to anything (she knew the area was at least empty).

“Wow,” she says in a wooden voice, “I wonder what that could be.”  
  
“Brigitte!” Torbs said again, “are you talking to the machines again? Honey.”  
  
Brigitte was blinking several times, “wait, what was that?”  
  
“Better check it out,” Hana says stiffly, “it sounds like a malfunction with my mech.”  
  
Brigitte nods, “I should go eat…” She hesitates, “but I could stop by later.”  
  
“Only if you have time, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you,” Hana felt like she was in English class all over again and listening to pre-recorded voices trying to tell her where the bank was. The little voices would then rap about it.

She hadn’t reached rapping yet (she didn’t even know what rhymed with ‘crush my face with your thighs’).

“It wouldn’t be any trouble at all,” Brigitte was starting to turn around, “I’d love to meet some more people like me,” she hesitates, “heroes. In Overwatch.”

Hana’s eyebrows raise, “I’d like that too.”  
  
Brigitte bites her lip, “I’ll swing by.”  
  
Hana just nods and starts to wave, “Well… I’ll go look at my mech and check on it.”

“Okay!” She starts to jog away, “I’ll be there after lunch.”  
  
“Thank you!” Hana says with a little sigh, though she knew the main problem was going to be ‘smoking crater with a couple parts strewn all over the place.’

Her stomach lurches as she watches the other girl retreat with her ponytail waving back and forth.

 _Where was her cat outfit again?_  
  
She had to have her damn Lolita suit somewhere from her rebellious days.

\------------

Hana was prepared to show Brigitte the smoking hole that was her mech with some sort of ‘my, I guess I’ll have to build it from scratch again here in this warehouse where you work. Darn.’

And then the alarm bells went off.

“Warning,” Winston’s voice buzzed over the intercoms, “approaching Talon attack on nearby shipping vessel. Prepare for defense mission.”  
  
Hana curses to herself and clenches her fists, “oh come on.”  
  
She already sees on her phone that they’re bringing her new mech by plane right then with a little ‘what happened?’ Text from her handlers.

Hana just sighs, ‘accident.’

‘Be more careful.’

She just shakes her head and puts her headset on as she links up with the internet.

“What’s up nerds,” she says casually, “today we’re live-blogging a fight between me, the ocean, and some evil jackasses with the overall competency of piss on a forest fire…”  
  
She tries to stick around to see Brigitte suit up or pass her or lift her giant hammer, but according to Winston she was the first one to launch. Hana just sighs and waits to explode herself on a ship in the name of justice and freedom and not getting a gf because you have to fight evil.

\--------

Attempt Three: Ground Laying

  
Perhaps she hadn’t discovered what attracted girls (compliments? Candies? Bees? Fallout New Vegas?) but she was slowly discovering what _didn’t_ attract girls. Namely: lying on the ground, being immobile, staring at nothing, being on the ground while staring at nothing.

The last few days Hana spent most of her time launching herself into the ocean in mid-air battle (not her strongest terrain) and lamenting the sniffles. Sure, she could go visit Brigitte again, but what if her nose ran while she was looking at her? What if she already thought she was a weirdo?  
  
What if she was somehow straight and everyone was straight and Hana was inventing not-straightness and-

She sniffed loudly while lying on the floor. She had returned to Seoul for a couple days since her team considered sniffles very serious. Plus, her handlers didn’t understand what she was doing in Beijing and then Manilla in the first place.

Hana had spent the last three days drinking tea and playing animal crossing non-stop. She was now a fisherman, occupation: fish, town: Bumville, national anthem: the funeral march.

Hana could still hear the music of the game as she examined the cracks in her walls. She hears a little buzz from her phone.

A little green frog icon pops up.

L: talk to her??  
  
Hana groans and reaches for another kleenex.

Me: um? :/ we were talking about my town

L: I havent even met brigitte, but I now know her birthday, favorite animal, and what wrenches she likes

Me: is there really that many i’s in her name? English is stupid

L: I think that’s the Swedish version, anyway, Hana

Me: I go by ‘Mayor of Bumville’ now

L: I’m calling Tracer

Me: noooooo, she’s not my mom, I don’t have a mother, I was born in this cyber town and I will die in this cyber town

L: I bet she met Emily somehow

Hana was overall surprised Lucio still talked to her after she spent 17 hours describing her New Leaf hamlet to him. He was still typing.

Me: stop with your little typing bubbles, Tracer exists like, in the fifth plane where 1. Aiming accuracy is fake and for straights 2. Girls can like, meet other girls

L: do you have Overwatch’s contacts list? I’m calling Reinhardt at least

Me: I will explode myself.

L: more than usual?

Me: I can’t hear you, I’m turning up this piano and flute music shit and rocking out

L: aren’t you still having your birthday party? Tell me someone doesn’t need to order you a cake

Me: I still have handler’s, jeez. ALso I’m wearing this:  
[Image Sent]

L: frilly cat costume?  
L: I thought rabbits were your thing

Me: I’m switching.

Me: also, becoming a robot? Maybe? The ladies think robots are s-e-x-y

Me: I bet Zenyatta gets tons of ass

L: the next time I like someone Hana it’s going to be hell

Me: what about him?

[Image sent]

Me: or her?

[Image sent]

L: both of those are just pictures of Junkrat

L: where did you get picture of him in heels...

L: I don’t think I want to know, anyway, whatever, I’m calling Tracer

Me: nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnhhh

L: it’s ringing

Me: I hate this, I’m turning my phone off, goodbye

Hana rolled over on her floor and groaned.

She had two options: 1. suck it up and die alone. 2. Blood sacrifice

  
She taps her finger lethargically across the hardwood floor and lets the warmth of the Ondol soak into her body. She imagined becoming part of the furniture and just staying there forever, no more wars to fight or grumpy government workers telling her when to smile.

Hana thinks she falls asleep with the dull lull of the music running through her head and the warmth of the floor easing over her. She watches her phone for a long second and dreams of brunette girls in high-ponytails from countries that sold tables and fish.

Her phone buzzes but her eyes were already drooping shut, she curls up where she lays and wonders again how to make words right and girls interested.


	2. The Sniffles

Hana was dozing on her floor, the heat curling in her bones and sinking into her center, radiating up against her cheek and making her thoughts blur and fizz together like a shaken soda.

She was going on day four home in Seoul and she wasn’t sure if that was making anything better. Sometimes she wished an evil mastermind would flood the moon or something, steal an ancient robot war machine, something interesting.

She kicks her legs lazily in the air and her thoughts drift in and out, she reaches for her phone again slowly and itches to go back online for at least a little bit. Like a few posts on instagram, go on some facebooks about old ladies fist-fighting.

She sees the slew of fanmail that started with ‘so when’s the next video?’ and pushes the phone away from herself again anyway.

Hana curls up around one of her socks piles on the floor and wishes she hadn’t told Lucio they weren’t talking for at least a good 21 years until he stopped pestering her about Anonymous-Ms-Arms-and-That-Smile. One, you couldn’t rush these things- such as getting her number or talking ever again.

And two, someone had to be Junkrat’s soulmate and if he didn’t take the plunge and try it out how would he ever know?? Hana received back several articles on tetanus and standards.

He was also off now fighting a corporation that sold mind-control powder or something.

Hana rolls back and forth on the floor and contemplates early retirement already, she’s almost back asleep when a distant thumping rattles her consciousness.

_Bump bump_

Two polite knocks come at the door of her little single room ‘private space’ (ie the space dedicated to just her being her and not owned by sponsors, a camera, or Big Brother).

She perks up slightly and props herself up. “Who is it?”

“Hi! Hana?” A steady voice replies.

“Huh?” Her eyes fly open.

“They just sort of let me in.”

Hana freezes for a very long second. “Who?”

“The people at the front door, they had suits on?”

“Who is…?” She rubbed her eyes, “who is this?” She knew who it was.

“Oh! Brigitte. From before.” Her voice was a little uncertain now.

Hana’s eyes go wide, “uh, one moment.”

“Tracer sent me over since she heard you were sick.”

Hana curses in her head and wonders where the nearest portal was to the deep reaches of space was, “it’s actually just the sniffles.” She calls back.

Hana Song did not get sick.

“That’s okay, I brought soup!”

Hana starts frantically shoving dirty laundry into her closet and kicking her piles of games into the corner. She struggles to find her lights so it looked like she wasn’t just moping in the dark in her room.

Which she was.

“Just,” she chokes, “tidying up.”

“I could leave the soup at the door?”

“Wait, wait,” Hana’s heart picks up, she shoves more clothes under her bed covers and stumbles to the door. She quickly flips her hair back and opens the door slightly, “I’m here.”

Brigitte was standing in a light t-shirt with a curious look on her face, she was holding a large pot of steaming something. Brigitte gave her a once over, she smiles, “you don’t look too bad.”

_Too bad?_

Hana takes a deep breath, “just the sniffles,” she says again, “I don’t really get sick.” She leans on the door and tries to think cool thoughts.

“Well,” Brigitte shrugs, “Tracer said it was very important?”

Hana makes a face, “She uh, overreacts.” Hana curses a certain speedster with every fiber of her being, “she’s like that,” she scowls slightly, “a meddler.”

“Okay… She wanted me to bring you soup.” Brigitte lifts the pot again, this time a little helplessly.

Hana shook her head and tried to seem normal, she smiles, “soup. Love that stuff.” She steps aside, “come in, come in.”

Brigitte looks nervously back and forth, “I feel a little bad intruding now.”

“Not at all,” Hana put her hands up, “we talked about meeting up before, right?”

She nods slowly and Hana waves her in, Brigitte shuffles into the room and looks slightly lost at the door, she looks for somewhere to put the pot down.

Hana pushes half her collection of old school catridge games off a nearby table and gestures quickly, “here.”  
  
“Right.” She puts the pot down and Hana bites her lip.

“So,” Hana twiddles her thumbs, “how do you like Overwatch so far?” If Hana’s emotions were an emoji they would the one screaming with its mouth closed.

Brigitte pushes a strand of hair aside and looks over at her, “good.” She says shortly and hums a little, “it’s not what a planned to do…. But,” she clenched her fist, “it’s what I need to do.”

Hana nodded her head a little bitterly, “I understand that.”

Brigitte’s eyes bore into her slightly, “was it like that for you when you joined?”  
  
Hana pauses for a moment, and then shrugs, “I was already playing big-bruiser for the military before that, so it wasn’t anything too new, you know?”   
  
Brigitte hums and something flickers underneath her gaze, “yeah.”

Hana holds her breath as she watches Brigitte’s mouth twitch and her eyes dart back and forth, brown, brown was a good color. Finally, she claps her hands together as she gathers up the scraps of herself a little bit, “We should eat.”

Brigitte nods fervently, “That sounds good! Yes, I made it myself.”

Hana’s heart picks up, “you made it… for me?” Was that a date? Was getting the sniffles a date?

“Well,” she scratched the back of her neck, “I was in the neighborhood, so I didn’t have all the usual ingredients, but,” she shifts back and forth in place, “it’s Svenska Fisksoppa, a uh, type of Swedish stew.”

Hana beams, “that sounds awesome.” She gives a thumbs up, “Swedish… yeah.”

“Have you been?” Brigitte was still rubbing her hands together.

Hana taps her chin and tries to catch Brigitte’s eye, “Well, briefly. I’m a bit of traveler you know.”

Brigitte looks up as she takes out two bowls from the bag she was carrying, “Oh?”

She nods, “Yeah,” Hana leans forward, “I beat up people I don’t know in Europe, in South America, all over Asia, it’s kind of like my hobby. Punching strangers all over the world and then leaving.”

Brigitte laughs and covers her mouth, it was a thick rough laugh, one from mountain caves and heavy winters, Hana smiles to herself. She tries to push down the thought that it sounded like Torbjorns- she tried to push that far away.

“I guess I have that to look forward to,” she shook her head.

Hana looks for some sort of napkin around her room, “you get used to it. And then it’s just kinda… a day job.”

“Do you,” Brigitte examined her, “do you like it?”

“Eh,” Hana felt a little bad under Brigitte’s earnest gaze, “as much as I can?”

She just nods at that solemnly, “come come,” she waves at her, “it’s hot.”

Hana gives up her quest for napkins and shuffles back over, she rubs the back of her neck, “I feel… a little bad.”

Brigitte looks up and points at her face, “like, your nose?”

Hana chuckles at that, “no. I just don’t have anything for you.”

Brigitte smiles gently, “no, no, this is my welcoming gift to you.” She pushes the soup toward her, “to working together.”

Hana’s heart drops but she lifts her soup bowl, “to working together.” She gives a squeaky laugh, “Work friends.”

Brigitte clinks their cups together, “Work friends!” They both take a bite and Hana curses herself. Working together.

To work friends, to office acquaintances, to being so bad at flirting that you might as well be those guys in the elevator that just nod at each other every day and say ‘weathers pretty bad.’ Hana hangs her head and hears the ‘Game Over’ Mario Smash bros voice-over in her head as she swallows the first bite.

She had been KOed. She stares down at her hands for a second.

She hears a throat-clear, Brigitte whispers slowly, “Do you not like it?”  
  
Hana looks up and shoves another spoonful into her mouth quickly and swallows the burning hot liquid, her eyes water. “I love it.” She says after swallowing.

Brigitte cocks her head to the side, “it is a little hot though?”  
  
Hana bites her lip, “I like hot things.” _Like you baby._

She doesn’t say that. Which was either the problem or the answer.

Brigitte grins with a slight chuckle, “you can tell me if you just burned your tongue you know.”  
  
Hana puffs her cheeks out, “not only did I not burn my tongue, but now I’m going to heat this up to a hundred degrees with my MEKA flamethrower and eat that.”   
  
“Your MEKA has a flame-thrower?” Brigitte’s eyes go huge.

Hana grins and leans back, “I’m working on it.”  
  
Brigitte’s mouth makes a little funny squiggle line, “For soup heating up purposes?”

Hana sniffs, “maybe.”  
  
Brigitte laughs with a slight sparkle in her eyes, “I see.”

Hana wagged a finger in the air, “easy there. Only friends, my mom, and the ghost of Ryan Gosling are allowed to make fun of me.” She points at herself with her thumb, “it’s in my contract.”

“Contract?”  
  
“Yes. Big contract, first rule, no teasing.”

Brigitte sipped her soup mildly with a slight grin, “No teasing, got it. I did hear you were a big deal.”   
  
Hana sits up straight and her mouth falls open, “you did?” She clears her throat, “I mean, yeah. I basically invented the quadruple jump in Team Fortress 2.” She fluffs her hair, “I wasn’t even a mod and I discovered that shit in the first hour.”   
  
“Right,” Hana couldn’t tell if Brigitte was amused or not, “I was thinking more along the lines of ‘youngest pilot of military mech in history with most reported missions of any young officer.’”   
  
Hana shrugs, “that’s mostly a bonus.”   
  
Brigitte laughs, “please eat your soup then miss quadruple flip.”

Hana shifts in place and wants to stop staring, on one hand it was a little unfair that Brigitte was both beautiful and charming. But sometimes Overwatch did recruit the best and brightest, and then the rest of them that were just low-key personal disasters.

But she doesn’t bring up McCree, Mercy’s weird ceramic gnome collection, or the fact that Lucio had a Avril Lavigne phase.

She chews on her bottom lip, sipping more soup despite her badly damaged tongue complaining at her. Brigitte shook her head a couple more times.

“Really, do you need ice?”  
  
Hana just shook her head, “absolutely not.”

Brigitte gives her a look, “What if it’s just ice cream?”  
  
Hana blinks a couple times, “we could… get ice cream.” She bats her eyes a little bit, “I mean, I don’t have any here. We would have to go out. Together. For ice cream.”

Brigitte raises her eyebrows, “okay?”  
  
Ice Cream, out, two of them=date. Date Hana could talk about in her private vlog and send gifs about to Lucio of.

She robotically goes to stand up but Brigitte was putting her hand up, “I have to report back to Tracer first but…”  
  
Hana deflates a little bit, “don’t tell me this was a mission.”   
  
“I mean, not a mission mission.” Brigitte says slowly, “I think she just wanted me to meet some of you.”   
  
Hana blinks, “yeah, I’m sure, something like that…” She wondered if Tracer had flashed to the future yet and had already seen Hana sticking her foot up her ass there.

“Is South Korean ice cream like European ice cream?” Brigitte asks slowly.

Hana snickers, “yes. Korean ice cream is like European ice cream, promise.”  
  
Brigitte seemed not to know what to do with her hands, “Okay! I’ll… I’ll be back.” She jumps to her feet, placing her empty bowl down, “Don’t burn your tongue anymore while I’m reporting back.”   
  
Hana gives a little salute, “no promises.” She says lightly, “I saw a stove top that looked pretty appealing recently.”

Brigitte’s mouth falls open, “don’t even-” She pauses and then huffs gently, “you’re joking.” Hana just snorts in response, Brigitte sighs, “I need a ‘no-teasing’ clause in my contract.”

Hana gives a little salute, “as long as I get an asterisk by my name, sure.”  
  
Brigitte was looking down at her with a small smile, “what kind of asterisk?”   
  
Hana grins, maybe this was going well, “Exception for Hana Song on weekends, holidays, and every last Friday of the month.”   
  
Brigette rolls her eyes, “Sounds complicated.”   
  
“These things usually are.”   
  
Brigette bends over her slightly, “listen,” she says slowly, “I’ll stick to trying to figure out how that one guy turns into shadows-”   
  
“Evil science magic.”   
  
“And then maybe deal with my celebrity legal terms and conditions.”   
  
Hana laughs, “I’m sure.”   
  
“Not that,” Brigitte’s face goes slightly pink, “not that I think I’ll be a celebrity or anything.”   
  
Hana clicks her tongue, “oh come on, you’ll have enough fanclubs to run a small government once word of starts going around.” Or maybe just pictures, Hana’s insides clench a little at that.

Brigitte snorts, “sounds stressful. I don’t think I’ll try to get in the papers.”  
  
Hana waves a hand in the air and slowly stands up, “Nah,” stretching her arms slightly, “It just sort of happens,” Hana chuckles, “there’ll be entire wikipedia pages dedicated to your nose soon.”   
  
Hana’s eyes go a little wide, and she realizes how dry her mouth was, Brigitte was hovering over her slightly. Just standing, her eyes focused and lips slightly parted.

“My nose?” She touches her own face.

Hana shifts back and forth nervously, "yeah." _It’s cute, like you._

She doesn’t say that, that was probably the problem.

“Sure,” Hana plucks at her fingers nervously, her face felt like it was heating up like a science experiment with liquid nitrogen and fire. “And your… cheeks?”   
  
She wished her voice was ten degrees more sultry and fifteen degrees less north of ‘shaky.’

Brigitte was nodding slowly, her mouth was still slightly parted, “I’ll keep that,” her wrist watch beeps loudly, “I’ll keep that in mind.”  
  
A little voice murmurs over the communicator, “how’d it go love?” An excited voice blares over the small speakers, “how’s Hana?”

“Oh right, be right there.” Brigitte was turning around quickly, eager to please her new boss it seemed.

“Wait, wait,” Hana says earnestly and then her hand freezes in place as she reaches in her direction.

Brigitte pauses as she reaches the door, she looked slightly breathless, “yeah?”  
  
Hana stares at the end of her fingertips, “tell Tracer… hi.”   
  
Brigitte nods, “I’ll tell her you’re feeling better!” 

Hana gives a strained smile, “ready for missions.”  
  
She waves in response, “to next time then. And ice cream.”   
  
Hana gets on her tiptoes to look over at her, “and ice cream!”

She chuckles and her ponytail was bobbing as she disappeared down the hall, “take care of yourself Hana Song!”

“You too!” Hana watches the air where she just was for a long five minutes, staring at the empty air and weighing her options. Then she goes to collapse on the bed. She buries her face in a pillow and feels her burning cheeks and twisting stomach.

She thinks she’s finally feeling sick.


	3. One-Star Yelp Review

Hana does not end up getting ice cream, and that’s pretty upsetting.

It turned out, Tracer, Brigitte, Winston, Mercy, and Reinhardt were all sent to the East Sea to check up on a island anomaly in Jeju. Well, nothing was ever really just an anomaly anymore, was it?  
  
Hana was dodging an ascending set of iron spikes.

“Who sets up boobytraps anymore?” She yells into her headset just as she hears the feedback from her live-blog start to scramble. “ _Who?!_ ”

The ocean churned beneath her like a swelling, darkening bowl of pudding in a blender, choppy, and swirling as new projectiles flew up from just underneath the ocean waves. There were underground caves smudging across the surf, but that was the boobytrapped part apparently.

Hana curses and yanks her controls up, “tacky. Tacky as hell.” She flies out of the way of an iron claw curling it’s way out of the water below and jumps neatly to a nearby set of rocks.

 _Of course_ , Briggitte wasn’t just in the area, something dangerous and blood-fueled had to be happening, as is the nature of potential dating. Hana jumps backward from another iron pole shooting up from the underground caves.

“Is anyone going to shut this thing off?” She yells into her headset, but all she hears in return is heavy breathing and tactical babel on the other end.

“I’m going in from the back.” A deep voice finally replies from among the static. “It’s a tight fit, but I’ll be back in five.”

Hana nods back solemnly, “That’s what he said.”

“Hana, this isn-” Crashing obscures the rest of the chastisement, Hana wipes sweat out of her eyes and aims at another metal claw shooting out from the sea.

“What is this thing?” She fires at it rapidly and hovers herself higher in the air, the claw grasps toward her like a giant clumsy toddler hand and the bullets ping off the dark metal. She hits one of the joints and it lets out a wailing gutteral noise before collapsing back into the waters below. It felt like fighting an omnic, but with a little less grace or taste.

Booby trapped ocean caves.

Hana is concentrating on blasting some metal spikes away from her underbelly when she sees it, the next entry in her diary that began with ‘fuck, oh fuck no.’

 She watches as a girl in heavy armor slams an iron claw back with a heavy ‘whump’ from her flail that rang in the air like a christmas bell. Hana’s eyes go wide.

 _Who jumps into a sea battle with heavy armor and nothing but a shield and blunt object?_ Hana is reminded brightly of one elderly gentlemen who just happened to also fight with a blunt object and minored in stupid bravery (stavery).

Brigitte lands gracefully on one of the rocky caves sticking out of the water and Hana’s left eyebrow twitches. A set of blue flames comes screaming out of one of the ends of the nearby metal poles and Brigitte throws up a shield.

“Secured here, go ahead Reinhardt.” Brigitte’s bright voice comes over across the com.

“Already in.”

Hana looked both ways, “Hey,” Her voice is drowned out by a new slew of flames sizzling through the wet air and the churning waters gape beneath them like a hungry mouth. “You guys,” She tries again, “if go under you’ll both sink like d-”

Hana didn’t know who came up with Overwatch’s battle alignments but they needed to be fired.

“Watch out!” Tracer’s voice rings out of the coms as a new set of claws punch out from the surf, metal mouths zig and zag back and forth like the heads of a hydra. The five crunching jaws surge in their direction.

Water pelts her visor, Hana’s eyes go wide.

She glances toward where Brigitte stood, she glances back toward the approaching metal clawd, Hana glances toward the angry ocean below. Armor was heavy, water was drowny, she takes a deep breath.

Hana puts her finger on the eject button. “Someone freaking catch me!”

She nose-dives toward the five claws and tenses every muscles in her body, she better not get the sniffles again.

\------

Hana was lying face-up in a medical cot staring up at an empty ceiling. The ceiling had water stains on each of the four corners, a little strip of late-morning sunlight dancing just above her nose.

Hana clears her throat.

She had on a light cotton gown and could feel a dull ache in her right side, her hands twitch by her sides and she wishes she had some buttons to mash or face to punch. She clears her throat again and raises her eyebrows, staring at the edge of the bed, she clears her throat.

It was a neat sterile makeshift infirmary room with equally neat and boring beige walls.

“Ahem,” she tries once, “ahem.” She tries pointedly this time.

“I swear, Hana Song,” Angela ‘Mercy’ Ziegler adjusts a clipboard as she stands off to her left, “if you make one more noise I’m putting you on extended bed rest.”

“Nnnh,” she whines softly, “I’m fine. I barely got scratched.”  
  
“You went careening into the ocean.” Mercy shakes her head. She fluffs her pillow aggressively, “This is for the bruises, the impact, and a mental stability check.”   
  
Hana whistles lowly, “does anyone in Overwatch pass the mental stability check?” She grins cheekily, Mercy just wags a finger at her.

“Maybe not in this room,” she grumbles before taking a sip of her thick looking black coffee. Angela looks her over, “Especially after tossing ourselves into the ocean mid-battle.”

She sniffs loudly, “I told someone to catch me.”   
  
Mercy shakes her head, “you have a slight puncture wound on your right side.”   
  
“Trust me,” she mutters, “I’m aware.”

Mercy tuts softly, “you know…” She fades out with a small pout, a thinking pout. “You know,” she tries again.  
  
“Probably,” Hana waves her hand in the air, “I know a lot of things.”   
  
Mercy leans over her aggressively, “you know someone’s _shield_ could have stopped those. Instead of launching yourself at them. From ten feet away.”   
  
Hana thumps her head on the thin white pillow underneath her. “You know, _you_ could fix my side with like, science necromancy or whatever it is you use.”   

Mercy clicks her tongue, “necromancy is for the dead.”  
  
She returns a wry smile, “I’m working on it.”   
  
Mercy gave a small chuckle, “Well I’m trying to do the opposite. Please take care of yourself Ms. Song.”

Hana groans and rolls over in place, “Can’t McCree give me the pep talk?” She says with a frown, “His usually ends it with ‘life is tough, do hard liquor about it or something.’”  
  
“Does he?” Mercy seemed to be contemplating that fact, Hana waves her hands in the air.

“Not that I listen.”  
  
“A given,” Mercy nods, “but Reinhardt also wanted me to talk to you.”

Hana perks up a little bit, “Reinhardt?” Hana squints as she tries to remember the last time she spoke to the old metal head one-on-one. “About what?” She blinks “Was it a ‘thank you’?”

Mercy shook her head, “it’s about his god-daughter.”  
  
Hana freezes. “Who?”

“Brigitte.” Mercy says flatly, “I think you met?”  
  
Hana cocks her head to the side, “I mean, she is kind of a God, but I mean.”   
  
“God-daughter,” Mercy repeats, “It’s like a... Surrogate daughter in the west.”   
  
“Well. Okay.” Hana itches her wrist and looks both directions, she vaguely recalls the concept. “K?”

“And I was also talking to Tracer.”  
  
Hana frowns as she starts to put that all together, she tenses, “That never ends well, you have my condolences.”   
  
That got the slightest eye-roll out of Mercy, finally. Mercy puts down her clipboard and looks over Hana evenly.

Mercy contemplates her slowly, she chews on the next words like a dog-toy, “As well as the fact I was remembering my younger years.”  
  
Hana groans, “I’m not sure I like where this is going…”   
  
Mercy put her hands on her hips, “so…” She makes hard eye contact and Hana almost flinches, “So. Have you… dated before Hana?”   
  
Hana’s mouth fell open, her eyes go wide and she searches her face, “You’re a little old for me?”

Mercy tugs at her bangs, “Hana, I’m trying to say something here.”  
  
Hana covers her mouth, “sorry, sorry. I know you’re taken.” She winks, Mercy makes a face. Hana takes a deep breath, “but this is… a little sudden.”   
  
Mercy arched an eyebrow, “you threw yourself in front of a girl with built in shields. It wasn’t very subtle.”

“Oh,” Hana’s face heats up, “that.” She shifts in place and tries to sit up. “I would do that for anyone?”  
  
Mercy gives a hoarse laugh, “you’re lucky that girl has had the social know-how passed down from Reinhardt.”   
  
Hana frowns at Mercy’s face decidedly, “your bedside manner is getting a one star review on yelp right now bt-dubs.”

Mercy reaches into her pocket, “it’s just, hmm,” she clears her throat, “when you like someone a lot.”  
  
Hana made a face at her, “alright. That’s enough right there. I promise not to like anyone ever again, punishment heard loud and clear.” She tries to wiggle away but Mercy was on a warpath.

She takes a deep breath, “I’m a doctor and,” she blocks Hana’s path, “when you like someone a lot. You should be careful.”  
  
Mercy places down a little purple plastic wrapper, it was flat and square and had the words: ‘Dental Dam’ printed on it in cutsey white letters on the top.   
  
Hana scrambles away, “seriously?!”   
  
“Protection is the first step in any relationship.”   
  
“I haven’t even asked her out!”   
  
Mercy blinks, “I know. I said this is the first step.”   
  
“In whose world?”

Mercy pushes the female condom toward her, “this one.”  
  
Hana pushes it back, “is this what you’ve been talking to both Tracer and Reinhardt about?”

“No. Fareeha suggested it,” Mercy pushes it back toward her and they end up in a deadlock, a heated face off as Mercy pushes harder, “aren’t you almost twenty?”

Hana sweats slightly, “almost!” She winces as the hole in her side bites at her. “And like. Ugh, Mercy, no.”  
  
“Mercy yes.” She takes out a handful of female condoms and showers them on Hana’s lap.

Hana’s face bubbles over like a heated pot, “Mercy! We haven’t even gone out yet!”

Mercy pats the top of her head, “Consider them an early birthday present.”

Hana rolls her eyes, “you’re uninvited.”  
  
“Fareeha is bringing you a set of new rockets.”   
  
Hana hums for a moment, “... You are _politely_ uninvited.”   
  
Mercy waves her hand airily. “Thank me later then. After your party.”   
  
Hana shakes her head, “it’s not like I’m going to be having birthday…” She looks down at all the plastic packages on her lap and her face blazes, “yeah.”

“You played ‘Birthday Sex’ over the loudspeakers at the last Overwatch meeting, and now you won’t say the word?” Angela tuts. “Furthermore, I meant it more in a… future sense.”  
  
Hana groans and lay back down, “can’t this conversation be over? I feel like I’ve lost five lives already and I haven’t even got to the final boss yet.”   
  
Mercy shakes her head, “haven’t your parents had this talk with you yet?”   
  
Hana snorts and puts her hands behind her head, “as if.” She says that part in Korean, so Mercy just gives a mystified look.

“Well,” she hands her another dental dam, making a nice little pile on her lap. “Just in case.”  
  
Hana makes a face at her, “why do you even have all of these? I know you’re a doctor but…” She picks through the pile of condoms on her lap and held up the handful of them. “Come on.”

Mercy’s eyebrows raise, “When two people love each other very much… sometimes after a couple of glasses of wine they buy in super-bulk offline as a joke and forget to cancel the order.” Mercy stares wistfully out the window and Hana makes a face at her.

“You know, Mercy, I don’t really want to know what you and Fareeha get up to. Please forget I asked.” Hana swung her legs off the bed, “I am feeling better though.” She gave her the peace sign, “let’s not bring this up again doctor.”  
  
Mercy raises her hand, “Wait, I was going to show you how to use them.”   
  
“Byeeee~,” Hana was almost twenty and she was scurrying out of a health room like her mom had just threatened to take her gameboy away if she didn’t go clean up her room right now that instant. She also didn’t want to get the sex demonstration from one of her coworkers. Coworker moms.

“At least take some!”  
  
Hana was out the door and thinking about how abstinence-only curriculums maybe weren’t so off actually, a much less awkward conversation. Hana wanders out of the abandoned compound’s makeshift infirmary and starts to take random left turns in the building.

She rubs her head and mutters to herself about Fareeha and Mercy ruining her morning, and probably her afternoon with the knowledge they owned a ton of dental dams. “Careful Hana, you’ve never had sex before Hana, but your crush is sooo obvious Hana. I’ll teach you everything I know Hana.”  
  
She pauses, blinks, and stops in place, “teach you everything I know…” _How did you go down on someone?_   
  
That and many more mysteries flash behind her eyes as her mouth opened and closed.

“Mercy?” She turns around in place, maybe just to ask for a hint. Or a slideshow she could visit. Or some very discreet books.

Books that weren’t just the late night comics she pirated on incognito mode at 2am to just, you know, ‘see what was out there.’ Tentacles apparently. And slobber.

“Hey, Merc,” she waves her hand and takes another sharp turn when she bumps headlong into another person.

“Oof,” Hana stumbles backward as her nose ricochets off a solid wall of muscle, “ow.” She rubs her face and jerks her chin up to challenge someone to a robot brawl that they wouldn’t win. That someone grinned down at her.

“There’s the little soldier now.” Reinhardt places two meaty hands on her shoulders and pushes her back as if to admire her.

Hana raises her eyebrows, “Oh yeah. Hi.” She waves at the two-ton soldier with enough jagged scars to make a striped tiger jealous.

He shakes her slightly. “I wanted to talk to you.”

Hana tilts her head to the side, “If it’s about… last battle. Mercy already told me to be more careful.”  
  
“No no,” he wags a finger in the air, “That was extremely gutsy. I liked it, you fight to win, admirable.”   
  
“Oh,” she puffs up a little bit, “thanks.”   
  
“I was just telling Brigitte that.” He says with a wide smile and Hana’s stomach flips over.

“Brigitte, huh?” She tries to be coy with the subject of someone.

He nods, “told her to take note.”

Hana’s eyes go wide, “OH?” She wishes her voice didn’t crack right then.

Reinhardt let’s Hana go and reaches into his back pocket, taking out a crumpled piece of paper, “and she helped me print this out. She knows I never go on my email anyway.”

Hana furrows her brow and deadpans, “you’re not missing much. Promise.”  
  
“That’s what I tell her!” He shakes his head good-naturedly and Hana just nods.

“You have a lot of common sense sir.”  
  
He laughs, “we were looking forward to this.” He holds up the crumpled birthday e-invitation. Hana gulps. “Brigitte says she was excited too, I’d thought I’d RSVP in person.”   
  
“Right,” Hana goes a little pale, maybe Mercy’s predictions weren’t so off to begin with. “Excited?”

He slaps her on the shoulder, “of course. Twenty, so young.” He gives her a thumbs up, “my squire knows how to pick up on people. Read them, I told her you were one of the feisty ones. Good ones.”   
  
Hana tries not puff up anymore, “I try sir.” She reverted to her military training, the man’s size and manner of speech bringing back her year-long intensives. “Consider yourself prime invitees.” She tries to joke.

“Good,” he slaps her on the shoulder again and Hana tries not to fall down. “I’ll tell Brigitte I ran into you.”

Reinhardt goes to turn around and Hana is still pale, maybe this really was happening. “Sounds good.”   
  
“See you soon Hana Song.” He waves slightly and starts to keep walking, Hana feels like she’s she’s at the part of a twilight zone episode where shit gets real.

She stumbles to turn around in loose circles again, “Mercy!” Maybe she really would need some sort of hints.


	4. The Things We do at Glass Five

_The First Soju_

  
Hana stands with her hip jutted out, eyes sweeping back and forth across a ballroom sized room with purple balloons covering the ceiling and crowds of people mulling about in each direction. Pounding music throbs through the floorboards, a steady beat from a B-List kpop band that her handlers had apparently settled upon as the ‘apolitical’ choice.

She absently sips at her first bottle of Soju, she hadn’t bothered to mix it with anything so the fine taste of sharpies and distilled rice overwhelms her senses. It seemed to clear her head, though she was honestly waiting for the opposite to happen.

Her high waisted pink skirt floated around her legs and Hana itched at the choker-necklace she had thrown on at the last second.

“...and that’s when I told them that the ABBA revival movement hadn’t really captured the spirit of the original band. You can’t have synth mixed with classic guitar riffs, like, come on man! Their costume design was more neon than 70s. Anyway, I guess I’ll go put on fishnets and punch my grandma.”  
  
Hana blinks a couple times and turns back to her companion, dragging her eyes away from the stagnant blurry crowds around them. “Sorry, what was that?”   
  
Lucio smooths out his frog-tie and gave a good-natured chuckle, “You weren’t listening.”   
  
She cringes slightly and bites her bottom lip, “Sorry,” she adjusts her choker again, “I just… I mean.” Hana gets on her tiptoes and squints toward the entranceway. “Where is she?”   
  
Lucio raises his eyebrows dryly, “Do you want to get on top of my shoulders?”

Hana looks him over and then down to herself, “Yeah, kinda? We could make like, one full person.”  
  
He nods slowly, “that’s why we’re friends.”   
  
Hana grins and takes another long sip of her Soju. “That, and the fact we both know synth doesn’t go with guitar riffs.”   
  
He lights up, “you were listening!”   
  
“I floated in and out,” she frowns slightly, “I mean, didn’t mean to but,” she pulls on her skirt, “should I put the cat ears back on?”   
  
“Absolutely not.” Lucio folds his arms across his chest, “didn’t Ms. Choi say you were supposed to be accepting gifts or talking to your livestream right now? I was very much there when she said that.”   
  
Hana waves her hand in the air, “I’m the talent,” she winks, “I can do what I want.”   
  
“Like get posted on every furry blog in the northern hemisphere apparently, sure.” Lucio sighs as Hana dances around ancily, “hey, half of Overwatch hasn’t shown up yet. I wouldn’t worry about it.”   
  
Hana was deflating slowly, “I put on cat ears for this.”

“And I helped you take them off.” Lucio pats her on the back, “drink your vodka.”  
  
“It’s Soju,” she reaches for another glass, “And you don’t need to tell me twice.”   
  
\---------

_The Second Soju (And Two Beers Later)_

 

Hana was hanging off Lucio and moping, “she haaaates meeee.”

Lucio slowly pushes her upright, “she doesn’t know you.” He replies gently.   
  
Hana throws her head back, “Haaaates,” she moans, “meeee.”

Lucio snaps his fingers in front of her face as they hid in the corner, “are you this gone already?”  
  
She hiccups, “I’m sober. Sober sad.” She hiccups again. “Which is the worst, pass me another drink.”   
  
Lucio passes her a water, “happy birthday.”   
  
She wrinkles her nose and takes a deep gulp, “I don’t want to be 20.” She says ruefully, “I want to be,” she pauses and leans heavily on the wall, “dead.”   
  
“Hana-”   
  
“Laid?”   
  
“Well.”   
  
“Dead.” She corrects, “And laid,” she bounces her eyebrows up and down, “a little necro-lovin.”   
  
“You’re lucky it’s too loud in here for your cameras to pick up on you or you’d definitely end up on some blogs.” He shook his head.

Hana giggles to herself and covers her mouth, “I’ve lost like 2k followers in the last month. And I don’t even care! I mean, I do care, a little. But I’ve been busy.” Hana looks around from her place near the pink refreshments table, “where is she?”

“Hana, it’s only seven,” he puts a hand on her shoulder, “relax. Deep breaths. Water.”  
  
Hana exhales slowly, “you’re a good friend man.” Lucio nods knowingly.

“And a great musician. A hero of the people.,” he says slowly. “Too handsome for Stars magazine.”

Hana chuckles, “Lucio! Lucio!” She mock-cheers as she wobbles slightly, “Lucio! Man of the decade.” He gives an easy fist-bump.

“Go on.”  
  
She laughs, “as your biggest fan-” She gives him a little salute.

Lucio smiles, “Aren’t you president of my fanclub?”  
  
She nods, “five of them actually. I bought them up when the girls started getting creepy.” She made a face, “stalky-creepy.”   
  
“You are also a hero Hana.” He hands her a beer this time as she paws in the air for it.   
  
“Tell me about it.” Hana sighs, “but yet not enough to get dead. Or laid.”

Lucio sighs heavily, “text her maybe?”  
  
“I don’t have her number,” she stares at the ceiling blankly.

“You don’t have her-” Lucio takes a deep breath in through his nose, “This is why you’re not my matchmaker,” he says dryly, “for me. Or yourself apparently.”  
  
“Uggggh,” she finishes the last drop of her drink, “what’s the point of having birthdays?” She drops down dramatically, “I want to be fifty and in a coma.”   
  
Lucio pushes her back up to her feet, “come on.” He starts to walk her back over to the main area, “I heard Zarya wanted to say hi. Be friendly, think about something else.”   
  
“Zarya has nice arms,” Hana felt slightly dizzy, “you know who else has nice arms?” She blinks a couple times as her thoughts zig-zag. “Two guesses.”

Lucio groans, “alright. Let’s talk to Zenyatta first.”  
  
“I bet Brigitte loves robots!”

Lucio sniffs, “you haven’t even gone out yet.”  
  
Hana shrugs, “Mercy already gave me condoms.”   
  
Lucio sags slightly, “I didn’t need to know that.”   
  
“That’s what I said.” She elbows him, “we’re in this together buddy.”   
  
He sighs and Hana goes around to shake at least some hands, and kiss some babies (namely: her, the saddest baby).

 

_The Third Soju_

 

“I really don’t think a cap and trade policy will be the fastest answer,” Hana says with a slight slur to her words. “It could take forever to adjust the global markets to make it a worthwhile policy.”  
  
Mei nods slowly, “It would be a place to start though, trust me, it’s not my favorite policy to promote at the UN. But my own government has told me it needs to support local growth and the environment at the same time or they won’t consider it. No one says it will be last solution.”   
  
“But what about if people just settle for it?” Hana takes a long sip of Soju and watches Mei nod thoughtfully as they delved into their second half hour of talking about environmental politics.

It was something to do.

“That is a potential problem, but the whole thing is a minefield, in my own work I can’t even talk about nitrogen levels in the soil without…”  
  
Hana spaces out slightly, her thoughts drifting away from her like stray puffs of cotton candy in the breeze. She’s not sure if she meant to hole herself up in a corner with scientists, but some of her online community had shown up and this was the best way to not get dragged into a Samus vs Zelda debate. Then her MEKA might accidently come out.

“... internationally speaking, it’s going to take incentives as well as innovation.” Mei adjusts her glasses, “I’ve been working with President Fatou on de-desertification projects along the border, but I can’t argue that we just don’t have that much time.”

“The fact you’re doing anything with water levels to is a step in the right direction, honestly, I can’t see there bein…”  
  
Hana pauses, her eyebrows raise, mouth falling open slightly and breath catching in her throat. Someone had come through the double metal doors on the other side of the rented ballroom. A real human woman person, with arms and legs and a face.

“Hot damn.”  
  
“Dams too, but that’s stage two in the Congo, hydro-electrics isn’t ideal just yet, but I’m working on something-”   
  
She grabs Mei’s shoulders and drags her forward, “Mei, you are a going to save the fucking world.”

Mei adjusts her glasses again, “...thank you?”  
  
“I mean in the real way, not in the me blowing up shadow men and sexy zombie ladies way.” She let’s go, “but I have to go.”   
  
“Okay,” Mei waves and then adjusts her glasses, “I mean… okay?”   
  
“Stay frosty!” She calls and Mei cringes slightly. “I have to go.”

“Good luck?”  
  
Hana takes several determined steps forward, her spine straightens and her thoughts become laser focused arrows. It was eight forty-five, she was holding her third bottle of Soju (blueberry now), she was feeling warm. Damn warm.

Brigitte was wearing a nice button-up white shirt and black slacks, it was perhaps the greatest combination in the invention of fabric on people. Her hair was in it’s usual ponytail and she wore a pair of practical black loafers.

Hana takes a deep breath, really deep breaths, and furious strides forward, this was it, this was her moment. Brigitte was standing in the middle of the hall looking slightly lost and unsure about the floor tiles, Reinhardt was staring a bottle of beer down.

Hana lifts her chin, okay, she shakes her head and opens her mouth… _’Is it wet in here or is it just me?’_ Her mind starts frying, _‘That’s a pretty nice arm you’ve got there, mind if I get under it?’,_ She slows down _, ‘Kiss me if I’m wrong, but Devil May Cry 2 was a good game.’_

Hana realizes she still didn’t know what flirting was, and she didn’t even have a robot to blow up this time. She turns around mid-stride and angles herself back to the dance floor.

_The Fourth Soju_

 

“Do you think that lead bassist is single?”

Hana lets out a sound that might be a same noise as a clogged garbage disposal and hangs her head, “You know who _is_ permanently single?” She whimpers. “A budding incel even.”

Lucio blinks a couple times as he stares up at the stage, “he’s really good. I haven’t heard him miss a chord.”  
  
“Luciooo,” Hana opens her next can of light beer, “music boners second, Overwatch drama first.”   
  
He sticks his tongue out, “Go talk to her.”   
  
“I am.”   
  
“No your hiding on the edge of the dance floor with me,” he pushes her, “go talk. I’ll go dance.”   
  
She frowns, “I’m drunk.”   
  
“I know.”   
  
“I thought I’d feel better now?”   
  
He pats her on the shoulder, “drink some water. Start with ‘hi how’re you?’”   
  
Hana deflates slightly, “hi, how’re you?” She repeats again, “hi, how are _you_ ? Hi! How _are_ you?”   
  
“Okay… none of those, but you’re headed in the right direction,” he starts guiding her back to the ‘mingle’ part of the ballroom. “Go turn twenty over there.”   
  
Hana gulps thickly, _you are the youngest most decorated MEKA pilot in history._

_“I can’t do this.”_

He pushes her carefully forward, “I’m calling Tracer again-”  
  
“Okay, okay.”

She sweats through her purple top and starts walking over like her bones were made of metal and the rest of her is jelly. She wobbles out to group of Overwatch co-workers gathered in a circle.

“Hi, how’re you? Hi, how’re you? Hi, how’re you?” She mutters to herself like a completely normal and passable person that didn’t mumble to herself on repeat. She hopes the words don’t come out in Korean as she walks up them.

“Hi!” She yells, “how’re you?”  
  
A hulking Reinhardt glances over at her with interest, “I’m doing well little pilot.” _Shit._ Reinhardt.

She gives a weary smile, “what’s up?”

“Nothing,” he laughs, “the sky!”

Hana gives a wooden chuckle, “are you guys just… you know?” She looks between the little group of five, “Hangin?”

She looks over them slowly, Zarya clears her throat and raises her eyebrows at Hana, Reinhardt pats her on the back, “maybe you can settle a dispute for us actually!”  
  
Hana tilts her head, she looks around the gathered crowd, “are y’all fighting over here? ‘Cause you’ll need to do it outside or like, near a different city I hate.” She blinks. “Like, Daegu. Or St. Louis.”   
  
McCree glances at her and they exchange A Look, he tips his hat slightly, “I reckon she’s not the one.”   
  
Hana crosses her arms, “well now I can’t leave. Thanks. What’s all this?”

Zarya hums and Hana looks between all of them curiously.

“Hmm,” Hana jumps as she hears a soft voice, “I don’t know.” Brigitte was standing off to the side and Hana was almost losing her mind, right. Hi. How’re you. “She’s a little small.”  
  
“Small?” Hana stands up straight, “I’m at least two-kids-in-a-trench-coat tall and also, here to settle whatever BS this is.” She sticks her finger in the air, “I _am,_ after all, now 20.”   
  
She hears a residual little chuckle around her.

“Alright,” Zarya claps her hands together, booming voice filling the space, “who here then would make the best incredible hulk?”  
  
“Oh,” Hana deflates a little bit, “are you serious?”   
  
Zarya frowns slightly, “As the strongest one-”   
  
“You have to be angry too,” McCree says slowly, “You can’t just be big, ya’ gotta be angry.”   
  
Zarya practically rolls her eyes, which felt like a preliminary death threat from that particular woman, Hana takes a step back.

“And big.” Reinhardt adds with a nod.

“I think we can all agree the article was misguided.” Hana jumps slightly as she notices Satya standing off to the side, looking both stylish and bored like a slightly misplaced laser-God at a toddlers birthday.

Hana gives a slight groan, “You’re all beautiful hulks, okay? Good.”  
  
“Yes,” Reinhardt grins, “and as the chosen Hulk I think we can all settle down.”   
  
Hana’s mouth quirks up, “and this was a…?”   
  
“Online quiz matching Overwatch with superheroes.” Satya clarifies, “Cowboy over there is mad because he got, what was it?”   
  
“Hawkeye.”   
  
Hana points at him, “Ha!”   
  
“I don’t even shoot arrows! Both me and Genji can’t both be Hawkeye, it’s a disgrace.” He grimaces, “I’m the Hulk.”

“Obviously,” Zarya says smoothly, “the Hulk is a person of strength, integrity.” She gives him a pointed look, “not a cowboy.”  
  
Arguing breaks out again and Hana feels like ‘fifty and in a coma at that very moment’ was still a good plan.   
  
She puts her hands up, “one,” she says slowly, “ _no._ Two.” She shakes her hands now, “no. And three,” she holds up three fingers, “for the record, I am obviously Iron Man.”   
  
“You were.” Brigitte contributes softly.   
  
“Hell yeah.” Hana cheers, “and four,” she takes a deep breath, “obviously, the greenest person is the Hulk, so that’s obviously Lucio is it.” She had a feeling Lucio just got some sort of chill down his spine and a new need to kick Hana’s ass soon.

She hears laughing in response. “I think the small pilot has had too much to-”

“I’m not small,” she interrupts as she takes another drink of her Soju- pomegranate this time, “I’m still growing, and also in a giant robot half the time so don’t mess with me.”  
  
“Still growing?” Zarya mutters with a dent in her brow, “you are twenty little one.”   
  
“And I drink milk every night,” she says bodly, a lie, she drank mountain dew and army rations of crackers from a smoothie container.

Satya sniffs loudly and says something and Hana hears Brigitte laughing in response, Hana eyes them, “Hey,” she says slowly, “what’s that?”  
  
Brigitte’s face straightens up, “Oh! Nothing,” she shifts from foot to foot, “happy birthday Hana.”   
  
Hana bites her inner cheek, reeling a little bit from the brief eye-contact, “yeah…” She turns to Satya, “still growing.”   
  
Satya has a small grin, “Does milk help with the arms?”   
  
“Arms?” Hana felt slightly unbalanced.

Satya gestures slightly, “The noodle arms.”  
  
Hana narrows her eyes, “I hope ‘noodle arms’ means something different in India.” She hiccups, she might still be slurring her words.

The woman shrugs, “it’s not bad. Symmetrical even.”

“My arms are at least,” she flexes, “Udon noodles.

Satya nods, “angel hair even,” she gestures over at Brigitte, “I was remarking on it to our new friend here.”

“Seriously?” Satya just nods blankly, Hana sighs.

“Well, alright,” Hana blows a hair out of her face, “I guess it’s time.”  
  
Brigitte blinks at her, “Time?”

“You,” she points at Satya, “and me.” She hears Brigitte giggle again, “and her for laughing.”  
  
“Me?” Brigitte points at herself, Hana decides this still isn’t flirting.

“Push-up contest.”  
  
Satya raises one fine eyebrows, “oh, no. No thanks.”   
  
Hana makes a face at her, “someone hold my drink. I’m about to give you fifty.”

“This was really about the Hulk Ms. Song,” Reinhardt seemed still at least amused.

“Fifty!”

“I’m not that interested,” Satya clarifies.

“Fifty pushups,” she pushes her cropped leather jacket off and rips off her choker necklace.

“Wait, really?” Brigitte was looking at her skeptically. “We could I don’t know, open presents instead.”  
  
Hana was getting on the ground, “it’s happening!” This is how you get girls, right?   
  
Brigitte was laughing when she got down on the floor next to her, “like this?”   
  
Hana doesn’t look at her as they lay inches apart in push-up position, “yeah…” Her voice wobbles. “Sure, like that.”   
  
Her heart pounds painfully and she tries to get ‘win at all costs’ instincts to play with her ‘holy shit, pretty girl’ instincts.

Satya is coaxed into joining next but only to make it a more interesting contest, “I’m doing them with my left arm.” She declares in a bored tone, Hana hopes Lucio doesn’t see her. The two didn’t get along to say the least.

“Ready,” McCree was standing in front of them with his silly cowboy hat waving in the air, “Set,” he gives her another look, “Go!”

The room spins a little bit as Hana pushes herself down and then up, the Soju circles through her head and stomach all at once, it feels like she’s done twenty push ups after just five. She watches herself go up and down.

“Oh no.”  
  
“Seven!” the crowd cheers. “Eight!”

“Nine!”

Hana sweats slightly and pushes harder, she grits her teeth through the dizziness, she didn’t go through crash-course military boot camp for nothing. “Ten!”

“Satya is out!”  
  
Satya rolled over and was now doing her nails with the type of precision most people save for LSAT tests, she motioned for them to keep going. “By all means.”

  
“Eleven!”

They get through eight more and Hana feels like she’s about to taste the inside of a pillow as her mouth feels slightly cottony and her arms start to complain at her.

“Heh,” she hears a soft sound, Hana looks over, Brigitte was laughing again.

“Twenty-two!” The other girl hadn’t broken a sweat.

“What?”

“Nothing,” Brigitte was grinning, dimples appearing around her cheeks like stars coming out at night, “It’s just funny.”  
  
Sweat runs down Hana’s forward and her heart picks up, “what is?” Brigitte’s nose was a round button that wrinkled as she smiled.

“I mean,” she does another push up easily, Hana almost slips.

“Twenty-four!”  
  
“You just stopped their whole weird argument,” her eyes gleam at her, “started you own.” Brigitte’s snorts, “and then challenged me to a pushup contest.” Her eyes dart down to Hana’s now shaking upper arms.

“Twenty-five!”   
  
Hana tries not to let her heart pound out of her ears, “what can I say,” her voice wobbles a little bit, “I’m like the sun. Things orbit around me.”   
  
Brigitte snickers to herself, “you _are_ glowing.”   
  
Hana coughs slightly, “is this about the sweat?”   
  
“Twenty-seven!”   
  
“Because I swear, I’m only like, half this gross most the time.” 

Brigitte grins, “no,” she looks her up and down, “I am impressed.”  
  
“Twenty-nine!”

“That’s almost thirty.”  
  
Hana was breathing hard, “this is nothing.” She wheezes.

Brigitte laughs again, “keep going! I believe in you.”  
  
“I’m going to kick your ass.”   
  
They look straight ahead and Brigitte starts to easily pick up the pace, “what is that you say?” She took one hand away and started going up and down more deeply, “nerf this?”   
  
“Ah!” Hana struggles to keep up, “cheating!”   
  
“Cheating?” She tuts, “I haven’t even gotten started.”   
  
Hana groans, “Us mere mortals are not to be compared to people made out of granite and like, Zeus’s spit.”   
  
Brigitte snorts, “Well I guess _I’m_ the Hulk.”

Hana cackles, “you wish! Anyway,” She sings, “I’m,” she takes a deep gulp of air, “Iron,” her body curses at her in bright letters, she heaves upward, “man.” The alcohol may have dulled her senses, but she could hear her muscles starting to prickle on pins and needles.

“Thirty-two!”

“You’re doing well,” Brigitte’s eyes shine and Hana bares her teeth and snaps them gently.

“Patronizing doesn’t suit you,” she sticks her tongue out gently and Brigitte picks up her push-ups speed.

“Thirty-five!”

“I would say sorry, but,” she winks, “I’m pretty sure I’m about to win.”  
  
Hana’s mouth gapes open and pushes herself up and down a little faster, her arms visibly shaking like church bells hit with a jackhammer. “Still not fair!”

“Thirty-nine!”

The room was spinning a little bit.

“Almost there…”

“Forty-two!”

Brigitte shakes her head, “I’m about to reach a hundred by the way.”  
  
“Forty-five.”   
  
Hana would say something snarky back but she was gasping for air. She coughs up an old Korean phrase about bragging but it sounds more like she tried to eat her grandma’s good dishware and cough up a hairball at the same time.

“Are you okay?” Brigitte’s eyebrows knit together, “we really don’t have to finish if-”  
  
“Forty-eight!” Hana shouts at the top of her lungs, her entire body was burning like a meteorite careening to earth, she hated both herself and the taste of blood now in her mouth. She shakes violently as she falls back down, “Forty-nine.”   
  
Brigitte’s eyes go wide, “are you…?”   
  
Hana’s push-ups had slowly deteriorated into just shallow ass-waggles but she makes a show of kissing the floor that time before giving one heaving, heavy thrust up. Her whole body wobbles, she feels her arms start to give up the ghost on her, she was a gamer by trade after all.

Even if they put her in a purple suit and made her run a 7 minute mile all those years ago.

She starts to choke, “fif,” she gasps, “fif,” the world was spinning and her arms refused to budge another inch higher, lead weights on the end of her shoulders. Hana grits her teeth and her nostrils flare. Hell. Fucking. No.“Fif-”  
  
She feels a pair of arms wrap around her middle and drags her into the air, “fifty!”   
  
Hana is swung around and the cool air kisses her salty cheeks, a pair of hands were wrapped around her waist and holding her up. “Woo!”

Her brain was barely catching up to these facts, “Woo.” She says hoarsely as she gasps down lungfuls of air. “Fifty?”

“Give it up!” Brigitte lifted her higher in the air for the crowd to see, “Happy birthday you crazy bastard.”   
  
She hears muffled cheers coming from all around her, she didn’t really hear it. There were hands around her waist. She hears someone off to the side, “I thought she was going to die.”   
  
“That’s why they call her the best I guess.”   
  
“Well, I’ll be.” The last one was McCree and Hana had the impulse to fight him at some point later.

“Take that bitches!” She throws up the peace sign as she throws her weak, impossibly shaky arms in the air. “Fifty pushups.”

There was a pair of sparkling brown eyes focused on her. The air tasted like sweet chocolate creams and copper, she can’t feel her upper body.

Hana is twirling around, someone hands her another drink and she downs it in one gulp in the throws of adrenaline and fake-victory. Her eyes water and her throat goes raw from yelling.

“Twenty, and I’ve still got!” She laughs and finishes the bottle.

 

_The Fifth Soju_

The world is a blur of colors, the smell of the teal and distant music, smudges of memory that came in and out of the room like an aroma.

 Hana turns twenty at some point and wakes up in a hotel bathroom with her shoes missing.


	5. The Cleanup

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dumb things I've recently done: deleted the wrong chapter of a story :/
> 
> it's the exact same chapter, I just had to re-upload it, my bad guys!!

Eight.

Eight, eight giant mysterious bruises on Hana’s shins, knees, and one on her shoulder. Eight bruises, one scraped knuckle and her arms were still aching and shaking slightly like small tremors were forming in her bone marrow.

 _But_ she remembered how that happened to her arms.

Hana blinks at herself in the mirror, “Okay,” she whispers at her reflection, “One.” She breathes, “Hung out with Lucio. Two, tweeted about party balloons at my party. Three, tweeted about party balloon kinks. Talked to Zenyatta. Drank some more. Complained to Lucio. Tweeted about my 7 favorite cake toppers shaped like Winston’s face.”

Hana threaded a hand through her knotted loose hair, a mess that looked like she had slept sideways on it before brushing it with a fork. Between her hair, her bruises, and her pounding head Hana was surprised she hadn’t just gotten into a fistfight with all of Talon and lost last night.

She looks around the small golden bathroom. And this wasn’t her apartment.

She looks around, “Three,” she frowns, “I’m missing my shoes.”

She looks at herself in the mirror again, “okay. Then complained to Lucio. Got in a political discussion with Mei. Tweeted about the political capital needed to make social forces move toward more sustainable living on a global scale. Then tweeted about party balloon kinks again. Talked to Mei more…” She bites her lip, “then she came in.”

Hana peters off as she tries to retell the story of her night to herself, she cocks her head to the side. Hana walks up to the porcelain toilet in the spacious room, right next to her battered purple jacket and a roll of toilet paper she had used as a pillow earlier that night. And it wasn’t even her toilet paper.

Her phone lay uselessly on the counter, the battery completely drained.

Hana wasn’t used to waking up in unknown locations, she was a little unsure about exiting the bathroom right now. What if she had made a super bad decision?

She looks down blankly at her bare feet, _or what if she made a super awesome one?_ The type that sober Hana couldn’t get away with?

She wondered where Brigitte was.

Hana picked up a water bottle off the ground and turns back to the mirror.

“She came in,” she says again, “watched Lucio talk about some… drummer? Maybe? And he threatened me into talking to her. Tweeted about STDs shaped like cartoon characters.” She tilts her head, “there was an argument, about the Hulk maybe.”

Her dead phone sits at the edge of the sink and her makeup looked like a piece of sloppy patchwork modern art, one staring her eyes going through a raccoon punk phase.

“Started a pushup contest…” Her mouth opens and closes uselessly, “lost pushup contest?” She looks back at herself decidedly in the mirror and her voice drops gently, “won pushup contest.”

She squeezes the water bottle in her hand and takes a deep swig of it as her head felt like it wanted to break out her skull with a pickaxe. At least someone had been looking after her, that was good.

She drains half the bottle in one go before putting it down again.

“Won pushup contest…” She frowns at herself, “something about… ice cream. And riding around on someone’s shoulder.” She itches her head, “did I stuff my face in the cake?” She hums, “did I even get a cake?” She blinks, looks at the strange bathroom, and then her messy hair, “...did I like, did I get laid? Is that what this feels like?”

No one answers and Hana starts to get even more ancy after the first ten minutes, she finishes her bottle of water and winces. She realized she couldn’t stay in the bathroom forever, though that didn’t mean she couldn’t try. No one had come to knock her door yet.

Eventually, Hana straightens out her skirt and does the best she can for her hair (see: tying it up and away from her).

She hoped Lucio had a good night, she reaches for the doorknob. Hana hesitates for a long moment before letting her fingers ghost over the cold metal.

She takes a deep breath in through her nose and twists the knob, peeking her head out the door, “hello?”

She isn’t sure why her heart is pounding when she sweeps her eyes over a particularly disheveled looking hotel room. The sheets were stripped from the bed, cushions tossed off the couch, paper plates scattered on the floor and pillows stacked on the windowsill. It wasn’t gross dirty, nothing stained the walls or floor, but the curtains were sideways.

Hana wrinkles her brow, “okay…” She takes a step out, “is anyone here?”

She isn’t sure why her heart drops a little when she doesn’t get a reply. She rubs the back of her neck as she realizes she must be alone in here. “Alright.”

She steps over a pillow case and goes to study the pile of papers near the front door, this looked like a nice place. She stands up straight when she sees some Tylenol by the microwave and coffee maker.

Hana pops them back two at a time just as her head splits itself in two like a watermelon in summer.

“I better not have fucking died last night…” She mutters to herself as she glances toward the faint honey light coming through the window. “Because heaven is sloppy.”

She cracks a joke and feels slightly alone after getting no reply- like a dad a barbeque grilling for no one. She stands in the unknown hotel room looking down at her bare feet for a long long moment. Drunk Hana couldn’t do what sober Hana was too incompetent to do.

Hana groans, she wasn’t used to being incompetent. She walks around in circles, kicking the pillows and linens around. “Stupid twentieth birthday…”

She grits her teeth and pauses to drink another water bottle she finds.

Her eyes are blurring over slightly when she notices a stark white note taped to the back of the door, she raises her eyebrows and go stumbling over to it. “Finally.”

She sees large chunky letters neatly printed next to a small doodle of a face with glasses, Hana tilts her head to the side, had she even seen Winston last night?

Regardless, she starts to mouth the words to herself.

“ _Dear Miss Song…_ ”

That was definitely Winston.

_I hope this note finds you well. I noticed you were having a lot of fun last night and wanted to honor your request of a ‘really expensive place to crash. Like, silk sheets, down comforters and shit.’ I do hope the sheets were silk._

Hana hides her face for a solid minute as she takes in the fact she had drunkenly got Winston to get her some fancy hotel room for the night for no reason. One where she slept in the bathroom using toilet paper as a pillow anyway.

She stares at the wall for another minute until she’s ready to go on.

_I’m glad you could find the hotel well, I know you had your heart set on ‘robot drift racing’ but Mrs. Choi insisted we find other outlets for our energies. Please accept these aspirins and band-aids as a token of my well-wishes, I know Tracer did not mean to drop you. That just happens sometimes in games of air-chicken she tells me._

_Regardless, know that I am very glad to have you part of our team and getting to see you blossom into a more skilled young hero every year is a pleasure._

Hana pauses to sit down as Winston gets into his dad speech portion of her two-page letter. It was going to be a while if he got into how proud he was of her. And she would have to uncomfortably avoid him for the next couple meetings.

_I am very proud of you._

She gives a deep sigh, “Winston, I played aerial chicken, you don’t need to…” She just shakes her head as she continues to mutter to herself.

_Please take care of yourself and happy birthday Hana! Seeing the next generation grow up strong and healthy gives me hope for the future. I hope all the best for you._

_Yours Truly,_

_Winston_

_PS- the rest of Overwatch sends their regards! Lucio told me to tell you ‘Frog in the pond bong-water‘ and that you’d know what that means._

She narrows her eyes at that.

“Stupid Lucio,” Hana starts to grumble, “goes off to get laid while I can’t even get a pushup-contest-turned-marriage-proposal right.”

Under Winston’s note was just a little sticky note that said: check the fridge!

She smears her eyeliner further as a large dark streak comes off on her right hand, she shakes her head and slips the note into her skirt pocket. “Fiiiiine.” She pouts and lifts herself to check the mini-fridge, some part of her wonders if it’s the bill.

She feels like Overwatch might try to stick her with several bills, all of which she might deserve.

She lifts her eyebrows instead when she sees a little sticky note with a cat face drawn on it, the cat’s paw was holding a large hammer.

Hana squints at the little doodle, “that’s new…” She opens the door tentatively and bites her bottom lip, hard. Hana fidgets from side to side, her palms sweating slightly from the cat holding a hammer-thing picture.

She blinks at a large case of birthday-cake ice cream. Hana sits up straight and sees another smaller note tucked away on top of the fridge, it had an arrow pointing down that just said ‘ _For you!’_

It had the same strangely cute cat face on it.

Hana ripped it open and her eyes go wide.

_Hi Hana!_

The letters were deep, thick, and slightly curly, Hana smiles down on it and ducks her head slowly.

_I hope you’re alright after that tumble._

Oh no. Hana hits her forehead as she grapples with the fact many people saw her drunkenly play midair chicken and then break her fall with her knees. She leans back on her heels and hunches over slightly, her heart speeds up as her eyes fall on the next curling large letters.

_I hope you sleep well! And that the tylenol helps haha, I know it might be a rough morning after all that. It was such a fun party though._

That makes Hana smile for a long moment.

_Speaking of birthday… I hate to say this! But I couldn’t figure out what to get you, it was eating at me all night._

Another doodle was drawn there, this time of a frustrated cat face.

_Here’s some ice cream to make up for it, but I did have a question._

Hana’s heart picks up slightly in her chest, is this how love confessions in anime started? Was she the aloof but attractive cool-boy that got confessions on the fly?

Was alcohol the original answer?

_I noticed in battle you often go flying off when your MEKA when blows up or you eject from the cockpit and I’ll admit I was a little… concerned. I was wondering if you would consider letting me install you a built-in shield for your suit? As a birthday present!_

Hana blinks a couple times, her heart sunk slightly, that’s not what she expected. On one hand, this was still work-related, work friends, office buddies, elevator acquaintances who don’t make out in the storage room.

On the other hand! She wanted to see her again.

Hana bites her lip, on the other hand she wants to build her something, on the other hand, she wanted to install something in her personal suit.

_If you’re interested I could take your measurements sometime and start equipping a new suit! I’ll keep the same design of course, but with some compressed padding and nano-tech haha._

_Here’s my number you can call if you’re interested:_

Hana’s eyes go wide. She straightens her back and reads out each number with a little mental high-five with each new letter. They were cute ordered letters with an international calling code at the very start.

She was thoughtful like that.

And more importantly, it hit Hana. “I got her number,” Hana shivers slightly. “I got her phone number!” She jumps up and starts bouncing up and down even with her headache spiking as she landed roughly on her heels.

“I got her number!” She does a little dance like she just won a brawl against satan with 2D controller. She twirls around in circle, “ah!”

She falls back down to her knees, winces and then picks up the nearest throw-pillow and buries her face in it, she yells into it. “Fuck yeeesss!”

She fell down a lot apparently and probably kissed goodbye to a few dozen brain cells last night, but she glances at the pretty little dented-numbers and squirms slightly.

“Ahh!” She buries her face in the pillow again and rolls over on the floor in her nowhere hotel room. She smiles at the ceiling until she feels dizzy. Finally, she jumps to her feet and pockets her phone so she can go run home to charge it.

She had some texts to stew over for several hours.

Overwatch called her a cab that morning and Hana plugs her phone in like a toddler jams in a shape into those block holes for the first time.

She takes another Tylenol and responds with an absent-minded ‘nothing’ when her mom asks her about the look on her face. She grins, “nothing at all.”

Hana hugs a pillow to her chest and barely sleeps that night as she tries to compose the best ‘hey, how’s it going’ text in the history of man.


	6. The Beginning of a Beautiful Fumble

Hana was standing in a studio made of mostly concrete, metal, and motivational signs involving kittens about to fall off tree branches. It smelled like copper and fire, Hana didn’t expect anything less, though there were a surprising amount of colorful posters on the wall. Pictures of heroes and action stars, overwatch members and cartoon cougars saying ‘you can do it!’

Hana takes a long moment to take it all in and bite her lip slightly (slightly).

“Sorry this place is such a mess,” Brigitte was stuffing an old plate of food in the garbage and her clearing a table off. “It took forever for dad to let me have my own workshop.” She was shaking her head with forlorn. “And now I still barely get to come back here. After, well. A lot.”

“Ah,” Hana says with her ‘I empathize and understand you’ face, the one used for seducing girls and also her mom when she went through menopause hot flashes.

Brigitte shoves a couple of grease-stained rags into a pile under her drafting blueprints desk.

Hana takes a moment to tilt her head up at the plates of armor around her, the massive hammers the size of Hana herself, and the mechanical arms moving on their own in the corner. “It’s nice,” she says as she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, “It’s functional, l like it. I’m banned from like, the other half of Overwatch’s workshops anyway.”  
  
Brigitte turns around slowly, she grins, “was it for playing aerial-chicken?”

Hana’s lips twitch up, “no.” She wags a finger in the air, “but it could be if you’re in the mood.”  
  
She laughs, “I don’t think so.” She goes back to clearing off her desk, “I already lost the last round.”  
  
“Really?” Hana bounces on her heels, she gives a thumbs up, “nice.”  
  
She chuckles warmly, she wipes her hands down, “I take it you really don’t remember that night well.”  
  
Hana shrugs, “let’s call it ‘an artful exit of my consciousness from the scene.’ She’s more fun that way.”  
  
“She?”  
  
“Me,” Hana shifts from side to side, “her, Hana.” She itches her wrist and wishes she hadn’t just broken out into 3rd-person narrative, Brigitte was still smiling though.

“She’s pretty fun either way,” Brigitte says with tilt her head, “one sec.”  
  
Hana’s face feels hot, she just nods, “I’m ready whenever you are.” She tries to lean casually up against a nearby wall, “I’ve got time.”  
  
Hana had cleared off her schedule and then two other people’s schedules to be here. She was banking on Talon and the omniacs not trying to take over the world for a second so she could awkwardly flirt with a girl.

Brigitte starts digging through a nearby box, muttering to herself and yanking out odds and ends and then muttering at those things too.

Hana had conducted the perfect ‘hey, what’s up’ text earlier that week and informed Brigitte that she would love some nanosuit armor. Brigitte asked if she kept her measurements for her first suit, Hana responded with a resounding ‘MEASUREMENTS?? WHaat measurements? WHAT ARE THOSE?’

_No, this suit just appeared on me overnight, I have no recollection of getting fitted for it. Please bring out a tape measure ma’am._

Or at least, that was the how the conversation played out with a lot of ‘thank you’s and ‘please’s,’ and ‘only if you’re willing’s. Hana was going for ‘polite, cute, and available.’ She didn’t know where that put her in the race toward a date so far.

Brigitte yanked out a yellow object, “aha!” She held it up high in the air.

Hana deflates slightly, maybe this would be quick. Brigitte gets to business, “found it.” She turns around with the yellow measuring tape in hand.

Hana hunches over slightly, “So,” her eyes flick back and forth across the room, “you, like,” she struggles for a moment, “things?”  
  
Brigitte blinks at that, eyes focusing back on Hana, “come again?”  
  
Hana lets out a breath, “nothing.”  
  
Brigitte hums and starts to walk over, the smile was back, “well, I found my tape measure, we can start when you’re ready.”

Hana turns her face away slightly and gulped, _was she ready?_

She gives a shaky nod, “that’s what I’m here for.”  
  
Brigitte hums and pushes a stool over, “Okay, just don’t fidget too much.” She pauses as she looks her up and down, “Are you ticklish?”

Hana steps back slightly, “I’m _not_ not ticklish.” She clarifies loosely while looking at the corner of the room, she glances back toward the other girl. “Though don’t tell anyone online that- according to reddit’s top badasses I can’t feel any human touch on my skin.”  
  
Brigitte raises her eyebrows, “interesting?”  
  
Hana gives a small smile, “I mean, I might have incognito made that list myself.” She stands up straight, “but that’s just how you become an icon.”  
  
Brigitte laughs, “oh my God.”  
  
“It was a very logical thing to do at the time,” she reassures valiantly, though she could feel her insides squiggling. Brigitte’s nose was wrinkling and there were little creases forming around her eyes as she smiled. Hana starts babbling, “You have to get your brand out there. Make it solid, badass as they say.”

Brigitte’s eyes gleam.

“I believe you,” she holds the tape measure up, “now hold still.”

She steps up on the stool and Brigitte has her put her arms out.  
  
Hana closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, her heart clenches slightly and she tenses like she’s a steel beam being prepped for an earthquake.

A long piece of metal is stretched across her arms length, it’s adjusted and held there for a moment. She waits, Brigitte hums and reaches for a pen and jots down what she assumes is a couple numbers.

The measure is then stretched across the length of her shoulder blades. Brigitte writes down numbers again.

Hana exhales slowly and marginally frowns, she wasn’t sure what sexy Titanic movie scene she expected but this wasn’t it, Brigitte worked with methodical concentration. She wrote down numbers and kept her eyes on the tape itself.

Her touch didn’t linger, their skin didn’t brush like lovers passing in the night, and the windows of the room didn’t start to fog up like a glass house on a porno set. She moves briskly to start on her lower leg.

Hana droops slightly. Getting measured wasn’t sexy. After a few minutes of standing still she starts to feel the itch of boredom crawl under her skin. The buzz of the fans and sparks in the room made her thoughts start to scatter like crows in a windstorm.

She’s all but humming the theme song to Mario Kart to keep herself busy when she feels the slight brush of hands against her back, a soft touch that barely left a trace there.

Hana straightens up, her muscles tensing, deft fingers press briefly on her spine. “I’ll do your bust now,” Brigitte says evenly, “just put your arms out a bit higher.”  
  
Hana bit her lip and extended her arms, “like this?”  
  
Brigitte just nods, “are you sure you don’t have your old measurements?” She asks curiously, “cause the suit you have on now seems pretty fitted.”

Her eyes flit down over her.  
  
Hana’s throat goes dry, she opens and closes her mouth. In her mind's eye she gives a sly smirk, ‘ _Oh?_ _And do you like how fitted it is?’ She would ask before slowly reaching behind her, teasing the metal zipper of her suit, ‘Because I’m sure there’s a way to get even more accurate measurements.’_

_She would slowly, coyly, tug down the soft press of her suit, revealing one inch of skin at a time, rolling off the fabric smoothly as she made hard eye contact. She lets the material fall cleanly off her and to the floor._

_Hana wouldn’t shiver or worry about her weird stretch marks on her thighs, she would just shake her hair loose and say. ‘Like this maybe.’_

_Brigitte would take a step backward, in awe, mouth open and pupils blown huge, she would be unable to resist and would have to pull her toward her. Brigitte’s hands would run down her exposed skin, dragging her nails possessively down her back and making Hana give off a breathy mo-_

Hana has to stare down at her feet and count back from ten, her eyes are wide and thoughts spinning in frantic loop-de-loops. She takes deep even breaths in through her nose and demands that her face cool down.

 **_Don’t_ ** _turn yourself on at this exact moment._ She yells the words like a blow horn in her head.

The metal wraps around her chest, first her ribcage and then her bust, she waits for something to happen. The tape measure is held in place briefly and zips back into place with a little click. Brigitte continues to scratch numbers down, Hana exhales and hangs her head slightly.

She looks at her feet again as Brigitte finishes her chest, she looks up, “That it?”  
  
“That’s it.” Brigitte says happily, “nothing to it.”  
  
“Nothing to it,” she repeats while she feels like her brains might leak out her ears.

“I can’t give you an exact timetable,” Brigitte says as she slips the pen behind her ear, “but I would say a month tops.”  
  
Hana just nods numbly, “looking forward to it.”  
  
She feels a pat on the back, “don’t go blowing yourself in the meantime.” She says with a little poke, “I don’t want to see you flying through the air any time soon.”  
  
Hana gives a mild smile, “no promises.” She takes a step down from the stool, “but I’ll try.”

She plans on turning herself around and flinging herself on the bed like some dramatic lovelorn Jane Austen character. She feels a hand on her shoulder.

“Hey,” Hana turns back around slowly, Brigitte blinks down, “you alright?”  
  
Hana gives her smile that she uses at Video Game Championships, “sure.” She rubs at her face. “Just a little tired.”

Brigitte nods knowingly, “is it… the work?”

 _Sure is_ , Hana nods again, “you know, hero-ing just… wears you down.”

Brigitte raises herself up to her full impressive height of almost six feet, she grins. “You know,” she slaps her fist down on her palm, “Reinhardt used to get the exact same look on his face,” Brigitte holds her gaze, “And I know just the thing for it.”  
  
Hana’s eyes go wide, “uh-huh?”  
  
Brigitte’s face lights up, “a perfect combination for the world-weary.”  
  
“You have my attention,” a real smile was forming on Hana’s face now.

Brigitte leans toward her, eyes sparkling, “do you want to go to the beach sometime? Like a super-mini-vacation.”  
  
“Oh,” Hana blinks rapidly, “Oh yeah. Beach?”

“Yeah. Sun, sand, water. It’s tried and true medicine,” she reassures with a rich look.

Hana scuffs her feet on the floor, “that does sound… tempting.” She draws herself. “Awesome actually.”  
  
Brigitte grins from ear to ear, “I was hoping you would say that.” She places her notepad down, “just between you and me,” she gives her a thumbs up, “you were always my favorite Overwatch member.”  
  
Hana think she might need to fling herself twice on her bed like some lovelorn Jane Austen character, she can feel her face heat up like a firecracker.

“I don’t know,” she says slowly, “have you met Mercy? She brings people back from the dead. That’s a thing.”

Brigitte just smiles, “let me know about the beach Hana,” she gives her a thumbs up, “I’m free any time Winston or my mom isn’t calling.”  
  
Hana looks down and then back up again, she summons something from deep within herself, “how about,” her voice cracks, “next week? Somewhere warm.”  
  
“Perfect,” Brigitte hovers closer to her, “next week, warm, beach. It’s a date.”  
  
Hana freezes slightly and her ears ring, _date date date._ Her head felt an echo chamber that just kept going down. _Date._

“Really?”  
  
Brigitte just nods and waves airily, “Yeah! Pen me in.”  
  
Hana bites her lip, “s-sure. Can do.” Her face was on fire, her heart clenching, some part of her knows she should stay and clarify, and the louder part of her is telling her to run out right now. “Do you need anything else?”  
  
Brigitte shakes her head, “I’ll start on your very late birthday present now though.”  
  
Hana was dancing on the inside like her whole body might light up in a neon fireworks show, “It’s not late,” she says heavily, “It’s right on time from you.”  
  
Brigitte’s eyes go round and curious, but she doesn’t say anything more. Hana turns and waves frantically as she walks away. “Don’t put _too_ many shields in it,” she waves, “I like to feel some minor-concussions every now and then.”  
  
Brigitte makes a face, “Haha.”  
  
Hana pumps a fist up, “Keeps the blood flowing.”  
  
Brigitte watches her slowly, “Have a good evening Hana song.”  
  
_Date, date, date, date._

“Of course!”

She runs.


	7. The Beach Episode

Blue or white?

Straps or no straps?

Stripes, no stripes.

Completely nude? Completely clothed? And with a terrible illness called ‘the plague’ that never lets you go outside ever again. Sorry Brigitte, don’t want to infect you, goodbye forever.

...One piece or bikini?

Hana felt like she was doing her college applications all over again except she never went to college and ended up fighting evil robots instead. But she imagined that’s what that felt like.

Impending dread and the feeling in your gut of an approaching a test you didn’t study for, that and the dizziness that overcame her senses like a sweet honeyed light clenching through her chest. But maybe that wasn’t part of the college feeling.

She stares back at a very frilly pink swimsuit with a bow in the center next to a very tactical deep blue swimsuit. And by ‘tactical’ she meant it showed as much absolute territory as possible without making her technically naked.

She gnaws on her bottom lip and feels her eye twitch like a cosmic quake, life didn’t have to be this hard. But she could either dress like a frilly wedding cake or a stripper with her rent due.

She hangs her head and feels the material in between her fingertips for a second before glancing back over at the window.

She dances around in circles and checks her phone again, it read 12:05, she checks the weather out her hotel window. She squints off out into the blaring white hot day outside and just nods, “Don’t you fucking rain on me.”  
  
The streets of Okinawa were packed with tourists and locals that day, a hustling sea of life. It was technically a resort area and hosted a large swath of people in loose Hawaiian shirts and wrap-skirts. She could smell the sunburn and over-priced mixed drinks from there.

Hana reaches for her cat-eye sunglasses and goes back to her open suitcase.

75% of her packing was just swimsuits she ordered online at the last second and a kaokao stuffed friend she was currently squeezing to her chest in attempt to murder it and her own thumping heart. “It’s just an outing,” she takes a deep breath, “probably not even a date.”

She closes her eyes for a long second.  
  
_Bamp bamp_

Hana almost jumps completely out of her skin as she hears a knock on the door, “it’s not time yet!” Her eyes fly wildly to the clock and then back to the door. _Was it time yet?_

“Let’s talk Hana,” a steady voice calls back in Korean and Hana takes a deep breath.

“It’s my day off,” she says to her head handler tersely, “I’m busy.”

The door opens unprompted and a small woman in a tailored business suit steps through. Mrs. Choi had wire-frame glasses, a high bun, a pen in her hand that might just be glued there and a weary look on her face. “I rescheduled the Sports Weekly interview.”  
  
Hana crosses her arms over her chest, “I know.” She sniffs loudly, “I told them I don’t want to do their dumb spread anyway.”  
  
“I changed all of the questions to focus on your recent charity work and athletic prowess, don’t worry.” She adjusts her glasses and Hana wishes the older woman used more inflection in her speech.

“Good,” she waves her hand through the air, “Then we don’t have any problem? It’s my day off.”  
  
She hears Mrs. Choi take a deep breath in, “Hana,” she could tell that was warning kind of ‘Hana.’ “Some of your numbers have slipped in worldwide traffic, not to mention rankings after missing that Super Mario tournament.”

“Pfft,” Hana pushes her bangs back, “that’s the line you’re gonna use to try and stop me from dating? Please.” They both stare at each other and Hana shifts from side to side, “not that that this is date...”  
  
Mrs. Choi just shakes her head, “you don’t know if this is a date. Which is my point. There are more pressing matters.”

Hana made a face at her, “more pressing matters.” She repeats the phrase in a high-pitched tone, “sure! That’s why this is my first not-date in 20 years. Most people starting holding hands in at least middle school you know.”  
  
“I could get someone to hold your hand.” She responds blankly.  
  
“ _No._ ” Hana says in exasperation.  
  
“Most papers won’t even be bothered if it’s a female.” Mrs. Choi checks her phone and starts tapping on it, “it won’t necessarily go over well, but the hero Tracer already broke that taboo at least.”  
  
Hana wrinkles her nose, “Double no, and who says the word _female_? It sounds like a robot.” She leans toward her suspiciously before holding her phone up, “Please read these curvy letters and tell me how many of these pictures have guitars in them.”

Mrs. Choi clicks her tongue and it reminds her of the night she accidently blew up her Meka in the training ring. That was a long time ago.

Her sharp eyes glance up, “I don’t want to see the worst happen.”  
  
Hana sighs dramatically and flops down on the bed, “that I accidently sell my body to Talon in order to get Widowmaker to sensually poke one of my tiddies? And then the world ends.”  
  
Mrs. Choi visibly rolls her eyes now. “Heartbreak is bad for stress levels. For combat. You know what you signed up for Hana, any slip and it’s your life.” She reaches out her hand, “I don’t want to see that.”  
  
Hana frowns down at her feet and then glances back up at the ceiling, “I don’t want to live like I’m dead.” She grumbles, “I’m going on a date.”  
  
“I could get someone to go on a date with y-”  
  
“Someone I like!” She defends hoarsely and sits back up, “and don’t tell me I can’t wear this blue swimsuit to the beach. It’s my life.”  
  
She felt like a 13 year-old discovering ripped skinny jeans in front of her conservative parents for the first time. Mrs. Choi eyes the very strategically placed strings on the blue bikini, she glances around, “wear the white one,” Mrs. Choi turns on her heels, “it works with your skin tone.”  
  
Hana opens her mouth to protest that she was either going to look like a Princess birthday cake or a knock-off sexy sailor halloween costume. She doesn’t have a chance to as Mrs. Choi reaches for the door, “and Hana.” Mrs. Choi looks over her shoulder and her sharp eyes hold her in place, “be careful.”  
  
She just nods dryly. “Yes ma’am. No dying during my dating life.”

She just shakes her head, “we’re doing the Sports Weekly interview tomorrow.”  
  
Hana cranes her neck back and looks out toward the blaringly warm day outside, “yeah…”  
  
_One slip and it’s your life._

Like she doesn’t always already know that.

She hears the door close on the other side of the room and reluctantly rolls over to pick up the simple white bikini with thick straps and a fitted waist. She sighs, “it really will go with my skin tone.”  
  
She begins to get dressed.

\------------------

Hana shows up near Manza beach at half past one, she passes the Omnic war memorial with a passing glance and lifts herself up to try and spot Brigitte in the crowd. She almost chews through her lip as she gets on her tiptoes.

“This shouldn’t be this hard,” she grumbles to herself as she tries to look over the heads of the bustling crowds. It wasn’t peak tourist season yet, but it was packed with everyone and their mother from around the region.

She stumbles back and forth as she tries to look over their heads and spot a 6 foot something European woman. Which really shouldn’t be too hard.

Hana screws her eyes up and hears her heart thumping in her chest, her thoughts wander, _was this a date?_

She imagines actual hand-holding and sharing deserts and calling each other cute nicknames. Would she like being called baby? Or sweetie?

Hana couldn’t imagine saying either out loud. Her only other personal nicknames were online handles ranging from ‘scrotum-puncher69’ (from 6th grade) and ‘rabbit-rabies420’ (7th grade). She’s thinking about someone cooing those to her in bed when she feels a tap on the shoulder.

“ _Hana!_ ” She jumps and feels a pat on the back, “there you are.”

Hana turns around in circles for a moment like a dog trying to find it’s tail, she stops in place in front of a tall woman with a high ponytail. She was wearing a pair of brown dad-shorts and oversized Swedish women's soccer jersey from 2010. A glob of sunscreen was spread across her nose and she had a toothy grin growing across her face.

Hana tries not to swallow her tongue.

“Long time no see,” her voice cracks. That is what people say on romantic outings, right?

Brigitte just puts her hands on her hips and looks around, “thanks for recommending this area,” Brigitte sings, “it’s gorgeous.”

_You’re gorgeous._

Hana just shakes her head and looks back up, “it’s the least I could do.” She smiles weakly, “everyone should visit the beaches here at least once.”

Brigitte gives a low whistle, “well, it’s certainly nothing like Stockholm,” she turns to her, “come on,” she puts a thick arm around her shoulder, “let’s get to the water before I burn up."

Hana just nods her head like bobblehead on a car dashboard and robotically walks beside her. Her pretty skin was pressed against Hana’s neck and arm thrown across her shoulder, Hana tries to get a grip.

“This will be nice,” Brigitte begins, “I’ve been in the shop for almost a week straight now and I think I was about to go a little stir crazy.”  
  
Hana looks up at her, “I know how you feel, I did a whole gaming marathon last Saturday. Don’t think I even left my room.” She doesn’t mention how that made her feel less ‘stir crazy’ and more like ‘a person again’ really.

“I saw!” Brigitte sings as she navigates them through the crowd with her height alone.

Hana’s face heats up like a geyser set to blast, “what?”

Brigitte just nods, “you were doing a playthrough of that new horror game, what was it called? You even said it was Swedish too, damn.”

Hana’s mouth gapes open and she pauses in place, “you watched my live stream?”  
  
Brigitte smiles back at her, “I thought I’d give it a look. Yeah! You looked like you were having fun.” She taps her chin again, “what was it? This is gonna drive me crazy.”  
  
Hana felt her face go very pale, “Amnesia: The Awakening,” she mumbles and looks down at her bare feet.

“That was it!” Brigitte says as she snaps her finger happily.

Hana opens and closes her mouth uselessly, her eyes shiny and wide, “please don’t tell me you listened to me yell ‘I’m gonna piss in your pants’ to the monster and then run away screaming.”  
  
Brigitte laughs, “that was hilarious!” She pumps her fist in the air, “Amnesia. I’ll have to play sometime, it looked interesting.”  
  
Hana threw her hands up, “no.” She shook her head vigorously, “it’s seriously terrifying. You’d have to start with Dark Descent anyway, it’s the classic. Awakening is more of ghost of it.”

Brigitte’s face was bright and round, “Dark Descent,” she says steadily, “I’ll check it out.”  
  
Hana groans, “no no, it’s seriously scary. Maybe start with… Cooking… Mama?”  
  
Brigitte gives a sly smile, “start with Cooking Mama?” She scoffs slightly, “okay. If you really don’t want me to play by myself, why don’t you show me? I’m sure it’s a lot less scary with two people.”

Hana felt like her entire world was being shaken, her brain short-circuits as she sees in her mind’s eye Brigitte’s large hands sitting over hers as she held the controller. Leaning over her, breath hot on her neck as she asked her how to jump.

‘Like this baby, you hold down the ‘B’ button.’

She would say in a deep husky voice before breaking out the champagne and roses.

She’s staring off into the nothing of the pure expansive blue sky when Brigitte excitedly touches her exposed shoulder again. “Is that it?” She asks and Hana shakes herself from revery to look ahead.

She sees the first line of the white soft sand kissing the sidewalk just between the hoards of people mulling around. Hana holds herself up straight.

“Manza beach!”

“Woo!” Brigitte throws her arms in the air, “come on, you’ll forget all about work after today.”  
  
_I wish_ , Hana was still tracing the side of Brigitte’s face with her eyes and holding her breath. “You first.”  
  
“No no,” Brigitte pulls on her elbow almost like an eager kid, “together.” She winks, “besides, I don’t want to lose you in the crowds when your more… Ground oriented”  
  
Hana blows air out her nose, “is that a short joke?”  
  
Brigitte gives a small smile, “a short observation.” Hana laughs slightly at the way Brigitte says that. She’s guiding her forward, “beside, you know my dad. I’m an expert at keeping track of people in a vertically-biased world.”  
  
Hana raises her eyebrows, “It was a short joke!”  
  
“Keep walking Hana.”  
  
She laughs slightly, covering her mouth as they weave in and out of the bustling families, tourists groups, and various teams of teens huddling around in packs. Hana hesitates as she wavers toward the edge of the sand.

She reflects on the fact she had left her sandals at the hotel. They hadn’t gone with the white bathing suit and she hadn’t packed anything else beside swimsuits, a shawl, and what she called her ‘just in case’ lace underwear. Hana opens and closes her mouth as her toes sense the heat radiating off the fine white sands. Uh-oh.

“One sec,” she pauses to take a moment to mentally prepare herself for sucking it up burning the hell out of her feet. She gives a large toothy smile and puffs up her chest, putting her hands on her hips, “It’s such a nice day out.” She calls out like a TV-show host about to announce the Hunger Games.

Brigitte cocks her head to the side and looks down at her, “did you forget your shoes at the hotel?”  
  
Hana tenses slightly, _they were clunky and brown and didn’t go with The Look._

Hana just shrugs, “it’s such a beach town I didn’t even need them walking around yesterday.” She straightens her spine and puts her military training into effect, “it’s no biggie. I’ll just go quick.”  
  
_Just think ‘coal walker’ and go_ she tells herself, then she feels a hand on her shoulder.

“Woah there,” Brigitte steps in front of her, “that’s hot sand.”

Hana tosses her hair back and tries to give her best impression of a 90s anime laugh, she bats her eyelashes, “it’s nothing.”  
  
Brigitte raises her eyebrows, she puts her hands out, “do you want to walk on my shoes for at least part of the way? Until we get to the wet part.”  
  
Hana freezes for a moment and her mouth opens slightly as if she was ready to faint with her lips parted like a shocked pin-up model. She lifts her chin, “why, and, um, how?”  
  
“Like this,” Brigitte takes her forearm, “Reinhardt used to do this with me when I was kid when he was teaching me how to dance. Also, yes, you don’t want to see me dance- it’s exclusively the box step.”  
  
Hana laughs, but is stopped halfway through when Brigitte tugs her forward and she stumbles onto the top of her turquoise closed-toe shoes. She looks down and raises her eyebrows, “Are you wearing Teva water shoes?”  
  
Brigitte adjusts Hana’s weight on her feet, “Yep. Very comfy, and better than my crocs.”  
  
Hana snorts, “you own crocs. Of course.”  
  
Brigitte eyes her, “Weren’t you in a crocs commercial?”  
  
Hana tilts her head to the side, “perhaps?”

She blows air out of her nose, “just stay on my feet and I’ll walk backward very slowly.”

Hana makes a face, “we can’t really…?”

Brigitte bounces her eyebrows up and down, “I’ll count `1-2’ then you step forward with your left foot and I’ll step back with my right.”  
  
Hana’s face was heating up, “this is silly.” She looks away, “I’ll just suck it up and run.”  
  
Brigitte drew herself up, “no one is burning their feet on my watch.” She says in a booming voice, “why do you think I joined Overwatch?”  
  
Hana sighs heavily, “one can wonder.”  
  
“To help,” Brigitte says brightly and starts to shift from side to side, “Ready then fair citizen?”  
  
“Not at all, but I don’t think I’m talking my way out of this.”  
  
Hana can’t mentally add ‘walking on a girls feet over sand’ to her romantic gestures list, though she tries. She just stares down as Brigitte dances her forward in the first baby steps.

“Woah.” She wobbles.  
  
“Here, 1-2.” They take another jostling step forward and give off small high-pitched chuckles as they go.  
  
Hana tries not to stare at the other girl’s arms. Or legs. Or chest. Which was right in front of her. She mutters at the ground, “This’ll take forever.”  
  
“1-2, not if we get good. 1-2!” They take a few more hurried steps, Brigitte’s hands remained on her forearms and elbows to keep her steady.

Hana gives a wry smile, “Is this also considered learning how to dance as well?”  
  
“1-2, obviously.” She says breathily, “But please don’t dance with your next partner while standing on their toes,” she says cheekily and Hana’s heart only snags a little at the ‘next partner’ phrase.

She must not think this is a date after all.

Hana takes a deep breath, “I think I’ll just stick to this then.” She pushes her backward a little, “1-2!”

“That’s the spirit,” they wobble forward, “and you can always just stick to dancing with me. I don’t think your feet can actually bruise mine.”  
  
She cackles, “a challenge!”

“An offer,” Brigitte corrects teasingly.  
  
“Only you, huh?” Hana smiles up and tries muster some courage from her core, “I’d like that.” She doesn’t look up at Brigitte’s face to gauge her reaction or if she even heard her. “But you’ll have to catch me first!”

She turns on Brigitte’s water shoes and launches herself toward the surf, “this is taking way too long!” She starts sprinting, a burn shooting up through her legs as her feet hit the hot ground and it was only kind of worth it.

“Wait, wait,” Brigitte darts after her. “This isn’t how fair citizens get saved!”

“I’m a rogue citizen!” Hana calls over her shoulder. “Taking fate into their own hands. Living life fully, ending up getting devoured by sand monsters.”

“I can’t let that happen,” Brigitte says quickly, her face flushed and smiling as she chases after her.

“We can’t all be saved!” Hana says mock-ominously while waving her hands in the air, “some citizens are meant to be eaten!”  
  
She dances around in circles to keep her brain from processing her scorched pads of her feet and sees the surf coming up.

  
“That’s a no-go on my watch,” Brigitte dives forward, “you’re being saved whether you like it or not.”  
  
“Nooooooo,” Hana was just joking but she suddenly feels a pair of hands wrap around her waist and hoist her into the air, Brigitte easily lifts her up. Bridal style. “Oh.” Hana gulps thickly and kicks in the air.

“See? Saved!” Brigitte laughs heartily.

Hana arches her back and wiggles, “betrayed!” She wallows dramatically, “taken down by my own hubris.”

Brigitte laughs again, “you’re so silly.” She starts carrying her forward the last bit of the way, Hana actually in her arms.

Hana juts her chin out, “silly?”

Brigitte eyes her brightly, “Yeah. I won’t tell Stars Magazine though. They said you were 'nothing more than a cocky prodigy.'"  
  
“I am!” Her face felt like it was on fire, but Brigitte wasn’t looking down.

“And I’m just a tender-hearted metal head. Sure.” She seems to look for an empty place on the beach as some Japanese school kids stare at them, Hana tries to wave them off. One of them gets out their phone to take a picture and she makes a face at them.

She looks back up, “Tenderhearted? You? No.” Hana tugs on her arms, “you’re just carrying me across the hot sand like I’m princess out of malice.”  
  
“Pure malice,” Brigitte confirms as she seems to locate a nice empty spot near the water.

“I’m sure Talon contacts you every day to be their point man.” Hana nods assuredly, “Talon. Hates. Sand.”  
  
“Oh I bet,” Brigitte adjusts Hana in her arms as if she weighed nothing, “sand? In those outfits? They would all faint from heat exhaustion, OR” she put a finger in the air, “look very silly.”  
  
“Mmmm,” Hana makes a soft sound, “Widowmaker in a bathing suit though.” She was joking when she says it but she does catch the shift in expression in Brigitte’s face. A tight ripple through her features.

“Huh,” she frowns and doesn’t look at her, “I’m sure she still looks silly.”  
  
Hana bounces her eyebrows up and down, “that’s one word for it.” She makes an ‘umph’ sound and bites iher lip, “makes me feel pretty silly myself, amiright.”

Brigitte wrinkles her nose at her, “She kills people Hana!”

Hana just shrugs sheepishly, “I mean.” She hums, “have you seen her try and kill you? It’s kinda hot.”  
  
Brigitte gives her a stern look, “absolutely not.”  
  
“Just a little hot. Like, I’m pretty sure that’s the reason for all the cleavage,” she blinks and whispers, “to distract Tracer.”  
  
“And you apparently,” Brigitte grumbles, “will the ground be okay here? The sand looks wet.”

“Yeah, sand looks good,” Brigitte gently slides her back to the solid earth and Hana’s heart was still beating like a drum beat in a military march. The soft press of the wet sand does cool her burning skin.

“Phew,” she exhales and wipes at her brow, “nothing like taking thirty minutes to actually get to the water.”  
  
Brigitte was unpacking her little side-satchell, taking out her gigantic Lilo and Stitch beach towel and flattening it out, she looks back up at Hana, then she goes back to flattening the towel. She looks back up, “but she’s evil Hana!”

Hana tilts her head to the side and kneels down to take out her own Minecraft towel. She had resisted packing the one with her own face on it for this outing.

“Evil’s got a nice butt,” she says a little helplessly, “I mean, it would never actually happen. But there’s no harm in browsing the restricted section of the store.”  
  
“Mmrgh,” Brigitte made a frustrated sound, “what does she possibly have?”  
  
“Well a nice set of legs and-”  
  
“Rhetorical question,” Brigitte says dryly, “I’ve seen her.”  
  
Hana gives a mischievous smile, “oh ho ho, so you know where I’m coming from.”  
  
Brigitte frowns at her decidedly, “absolutely not.” She draws herself up, “even if you’re, you know. Looking.” She says in a hush, “She’s evil. And bad. And there's plenty of pretty girls! Who are good!”

Hana covers her mouth and laughs, “if you say so.” She laughs again.

“What?” Brigitte reaches for her brown dad-shorts and pulls them up before sitting down on the long-towel, Hana bites her lip.

“You’re just so…” She shrugs, “passionate.”

Brigitte clicks her tongue, “you’ll see.” She puffs her cheeks out, “Bad girls don’t pay.”  
  
“Don’t worry,” Hana reclines back on her towel and spreads her arms up as she easily tosses aside her light white shawl to reveal the rest of her bathing suit. She bats her eyes up and tries not to fumble over herself for a change, “I like good girls anyway.”

She glances over at Brigitte for a long moment and the other girl at least had the decency to look slightly flushed. Her eyes were fixed on some other dimension beyond Hana’s right shoulder and she seeming to hold her jaw very firmly in place.

Brigitte kicks off her shorts next and reveals a deep blue one-piece bathing suit, with a pair of thighs that could bust open large watermelons. Hana’s spine tingles and she has to look away now.

“Well,” Brigitte finally says, “they better be.”  
  
“I wouldn’t want to paint my Mek black anyway,” she assures airily, “it looks good as is.”  
  
Brigitte’s eyes sparkle, “it really does. Which reminds me, did you use a 5a calibrator for the core or 6a?”  
  
“6a, duh.”

They turn to each other on their towels, both laying down in the glowing sun and their eyes meeting, they start talking. Hana tries to push aside Brigitte’s expression when she mentioned Widowmaker, the twinge of annoyance and something else. But maybe she was just like that.


	8. Victory Lap

Hana: 1

Social competence and fear of rejection: 0

She was keeping a score board. Usually it was-

Hana: 69

Social incompetence and fear of rejection: 420+

She was living proof anyone could become a pseudo-superhero and not Batman there way into complete isolation. Screw ‘stunted social skills’ she was staring at a pretty girl.

Hana was laying on her stomach with an umbrella overhead and her feet kicked up in the air, she was covered in sand but it somehow wasn’t grating on her every nerve. She was smiling. She had been smiling for awhile now and not just her ‘vindictive victory’ smile-smile.

Brigitte was balancing a shell on her hand, “okay, okay, this time.” She balances the shell for a moment before twisting her hand, the shell flips into the air and flies overhead. She moves her hand back and forth underneath it. “Oh, oh.” The shell lands on the other side of her hand and teeters back and forth, “oh!”

It seesaws back and forth like it’s thinking, wobbling in place while the audience held their breath. It teeters before flipping over completely toppling back to the soft sand below, Hana tosses her hand, “oh my God.” She laughs.

“Oh man,” Brigitte slumps down, “I thought I had that one.”

Hana sits back up and grins, “watch the master work.”  
  
She reaches down and picks up the smooth, flat shell they found. She places it on the top of her hand and makes sure Brigitte is watching, catching her eyes for a second. “Watch.” She jerks her hand and flips the shell high into the air, it twirls with a simple upward arch before Hana neatly puts her same hand underneath it and it lands on her on her closed fingers. It barely quivers.

“Tada!” She puts her hand in the air with a flourish.

Brigitte shakes her head slowly, “how you even do that on your first try…”  
  
Hana winks with minimal preening, “Advanced hand-eye coordination.” She clarifies and then makes a little gun with her hands. “Pew pew, lots of practice.”   
  
Brigitte slouches back down and rests in the bright sun. “I should have played more wii tennis as a kid I guess.”   
  
Hana gives her a thumbs up, “there’s still time.” She opens her mouth ‘you could always come back to my place, power up the wii. Put on some Berry White. Crack out the champagne, wink wink.’ She doesn’t say that.

Brigitte shields her eyes to look over at her, “Nah,” she shrugs, “My mom used to ban TV and internet after 7pm every night. She still does actually.”  
  
Hana’s mouth fell open, her eyebrows raise, “no.”   
  
She tilts her chin up, “she had a thing about ‘family time,’ and TV poisoning the youth.” She chuckles.

Hana sits up, “sounds,” her mouth was still hanging open, “like my nightmare. I would have thrown a mini-revolt at eight.”  
  
Brigitte cracks a smile and snorts, “it was okay. There were a lot of us, so we always found something to do.”

Hana frowns decidedly, “okay…but still?”  
  
“It wasn’t so bad,” she looks Hana up and down curiously, “why?” She leans toward her, “what’re your folks like?”   
  
“Oh,” Hana cocks her head to the side, “well not like that.”

“Hmm,” she looks her over, “how then?”  
  
Hana looks away, “I don’t know,” she sings, “how is anyone?”   
  
She tosses some sand at her, “come on.” She points to the waves. “You dunked me in the ocean at least five times. Give me a little win.”   
  
Hana holds up a peace sign, “I don’t give out wins.” She jokes, “that’s how you become champion third grade thumb wrestler, among other things.”   
  
“I see,” she lifts her eyebrows, “a woman of many talents.”   
  
“Exactly!” She cheers, “varied.”

Brigitte scooted closer to her, “did your parents ban TV after 7?”  
  
She wrinkled her nose, “no way!” She threw hands up, “I was like, the family breadwinner by the time I was 15. Since I was already, ya know, a champion.”   
  
“At thumb wrestling?”   
  
She snorts, “yes, exactly. Among other things.” She waves her hand through the air, “anyway, I could have been the one sending them to their rooms by then.”   
  
“Interesting,” Brigitte blinks. “Where are they now?”   
  
Hana frowns. “In Seoul, I mean, I still _see_ them.” She wags her finger in the air, “Because they weren’t repressive regimes that banned TV after 7.”   
  
Brigitte rolls her eyes in a beautiful arch, “You know what I was doing when I wasn’t watching TV?”   
  
_Becoming a minor Goddess?_

“Putting cats in small suits of armour?”  
  
“I was- actually, yes. Yes, that,” Brigitte cocks her head to the side, “how did you know?”   
  
“Uh,” Hana scratched her nose and shifts back and forth on her towel, “I watched your Overwatch bio they made on National Geographic.” She doesn’t meet her eyes.

Brigitte beams, “I watched yours too!” She crows, “I didn’t know you released an album two years ago.”  
  
Hana groans and covers her face, “Please don’t remind me. It was PRs ideal.”   
  
Brigitte poked her cheek, “I thought the rabbit song was cute.”   
  
“Nooooo,” she rolls away, “I never want to sing ‘hop it like you bobbit and put a pop in it’ ever again. I’m just lucky Lucio never googles me and music or I’d never hear the end of it.”   
  
Brigitte raises her eyebrows, “Lucio?”   
  
Hana makes a face, “we’re friends. He’s seducing some sort of k-pop basist right now.”

“Oh,” Brigitte hums, “that’s good.”  
  
“Yes.” Hana makes a sharp sound, “and terrible. Anyway! Go on. With your thing.”

“Well,” Brigitte puts her hand out and raised her thumb, “I used to thumb wrestle too,” her eyes light up, “and fair warning, I beat all my siblings every time.”  
  
She looks at her large, callused hand and then back up, her insides flutter a little, “are you sure you want to lose AGAIN to me? You’re ego must be made of concrete.”   
  
Brigitte tilts her head, she reaches forward. “I work with Reinhardt,” she says easily, “one of us has to have their pride in check.”   
  
Hana lifts her eyebrows, “noted.” She positions herself in front of Brigitte. “I’ll keep that in mind at his next holiday party.”   
  
Brigitte frowns slightly, “my mom always said it’s why I was ‘meant’ to be his squire.” She looks up, she was smiling again, but something tight was there. “To stop his ego from capsizing the both of us.”

Hana frowns slowly and delicately approaching her next point, “He always seemed pretty down to earth to me.”

Hana for the first time sees a crease forming in the other girl’s brow. She looked fixedly at the ground. Her voice lowers, “He think he’s immortal.” She sounded like she was speaking to herself. “He went out and got himself a new suture just LAST WEEKEND.” Brigitte practically growls, she scowls, “It’s like he thinks throwing himself in danger will fix everything everytime.”  
  
“Oh,” Hana realizes she’s seeing something she’s not very good at. Truth. About real things. “I’m sorry.” She says after a long pause stilted pause.

Brigitte’s eyes flash up, “pride.” She tuts, “it’s like wrath but you think you look good in a yellow pinstripe suit when you really don’t.”  
  
Hana fiddles with the end of her wet hair, “I mean, I think you’d look good in a pinstripe suit.”   
  
Brigitte sticks her lip out, “I’d say thanks but.”   
  
Hana shifts forward, “but now you’re questioning my taste?”   
  
Brigitte manages to grin again, “you’re very good at this game.”   
  
Hana sighs and tilts her head back, “It might be all that pride.” She jokes but Brigitte is still examining her.

“Watch yourself Hana Song,” she says in a steady tone, “don’t go getting yourself in trouble just to prove you can.”

Brigitte gives a deep sigh, “you’re so,” she feels the word around in her mouth, “mature?” She clicks her tongue, “I don’t think I could perceive half those things about people.”   
  
Brigitte gives her thumbs up, “yes. And adults win at thumb wars, go ahead.”   
  
Hana tries to untense her muscles, had she passed the test? She couldn’t tell.

She takes Brigitte’s hand instead and her heart picks up, she bites the inside of her mouth. She felt the callused ridges of her large, sturdy fingers and watches Brigitte’s thick thumb.

 _Okay_ , she warns herself, _you can do this._

She reminds herself of her scoreboard that day, Hana: 1

Social competence and fear of rejection: 0

She was winning.

“Ready?” Brigitte holds their clasped fingers a little harder.

“Uh-huh,” Hana doesn’t look up, her neck burns a little bit.

“One-two,” Brigitte moves her thumb back and forth and Hana isn’t exactly sure what she’s doing, “three-four. I declare a thumb war.”  
  
“Okay?” Hana lifts her eyebrows but Brigitte was already striking forward, Hana jerks her thumb back, “cheating!”

She laughs, “come on, champion.” Hana pauses, her heart still thumping in her chest and Brigitte focusing on her slowly. “What?” She finally asks when she feels Hana freezing.

Hana opens and closes her mouth, “nothing.” Her fingers were warm, soft in their creases, the sun beats down hard on Hana’s exposed feet.   
  
“Come on then,” she tries to go after her thumb again, but Hana was rigid against her, her ears were ringing. Brigitte examines her again. “What?”

Don’t do it, she warns her brain _,_ don't. Her thoughts buzz, _it’s like our hands fit together like gloves._ Hana grits her teeth.

She looks down fixedly at the sand, her senses fritzing.

“What?” Brigitte says again.

“It’s like we’re holding hands.” She blurts out, her brain outsourcing to her mouth before she can stop herself. Her eyes go wide and she goes stiff. “Wait, I mean, not holding hands hands.”  
  
She cringes, that’s not what she meant to say. “I mean-”   
  
Brigitte blinks at her, “Would,” she interrupts in a steady voice, “would you like that?”   
  
Hana’s face begins to burn. “I’m sorry,” she finally says, something compressing in her chest like a coiling snake. Her mouth purses and she tries to make herself small, she hangs her head, “I’m sorry.”   
  
She’s not sure what she’s apologizing for, but she knows Brigitte is staring at her now, really staring.

She feels something move over her hand. “One, two, three four,” Hana glances up, Brigitte was moving her thumb back and forth, “I declare a thumb war.”  
  
Hana’s eyes go wide, Brigitte quickly presses down, trapping her thumb there. She grins, “Guess I win.”   
  
Hana tilts her head to the side, “yes.”   
  
Brigitte leans forward, eyes sparkling, “come on.” She adjusts her large hand, slipping it over Hana’s. “Let’s walk down the boardwalk.”   
  
Hana’s brain was still malfunctioning, Brigitte was still holding her hand, “the what?”   
  
She suddenly didn’t understand things. Anything.   
  
Brigitte starts to get up, her hand was still in hers.

“The place with all the shops,” She tugs gently on her arm. “The sun is going down. We could get potstickers, my treat.”  
  
“Your treat?” Hana’s brain had reverted to ‘parroting things but in question form.’ Brigitte’s fingers were still clasped over hers.

“Yeah,” Brigitte looked up at the sky, her mouth quirking to the side, “And you can’t say no, I just won the thumb war Ms. Hana song.”  
  
_It doesn’t have to be ‘Ms’ if you don’t want it to_ , her brain screams but she was still focusing on her hand intertwined with someone else's. Brigitte’s.

She wanted to ask, ‘go like this?’ But Brigitte was helping her up. And still holding her hand, picking up her towel and satchel with the other one.

Hana has to wait for a long second to process all this.

She looks down at her feet and her insides melt, rough hand on hers, something was working. Brigitte pulls her cheekily toward the shops and she doesn’t let go.


	9. The Nuances of Cultural Understanding

Hana was either the luckiest girl alive or she had hit her head during some battle and was now in a coma induced fever-dream. But damn if she couldn’t dream.

Her thoughts run over her like honey, sticky and sweet and surrounding her in a new golden glow. Her hand was warm, warm in the way people hold it, warm in the way you go on actual dates with actual people with hands.

One hand. A very good hand.

Hana was holding a meat on a stick and her eyes were glued to the side of Brigitte Lindholm’s face, she takes deep steady breaths. Everything was warm.

Her feet scuff across the dusty pavement and she can hear herself laugh again.

“So, was it like, big fat crocodile tears or like one single manly movie tear?” She asks with a sly smile on her face.

Brigitte glances over to her, chewing the rest of her meat kebab with a deft precision, “I’m already regretting telling you this story.”  
  
“No no,” Hana waves her hand with the kebab in it, “it’s as real as it gets, I’m down with it. Everyone cries at their first concert, seeing guitar riffs live in person is like that.”   
  
Brigitte leans over her slowly, “Why do I always get the feeling you’re making fun of me?” Hana glances over to check if Brigitte is still smiling when she asks that, and still holding her hand. Which she was, with fingers and skin and everything.

Hana raises her eyebrows, “Maybe I’m a fun kinda gal.” She winks, “make fun wherever I go.”  
  
Brigitte snorts, “you’re not helping your case.”   
  
“It’s sweet! I wished I cried more at like, concerts or movies or horrible accidents or like. Anything.” She squeezes her hand and Brigitte squeezes back.

“It was a cover of Adele, it was very moving.”  
  
Hana was smiling, “I bet.”   
  
“And if you really want to cry more,” Brigitte takes a left in their wanderings and Hana follows, “I know a guy.”   
  
“Oh?” Hana tilts her head to the side, “is he like, a cayenne pepper doctor or just tells really really bad jokes? Because I’ve cried at both of those things.”   
  
“Perhaps,” she shrugs, “but I’m not sure I could handle it.”

“The crying?” She asks curiously as they wind their ways through the streets. “Or the jokes?”  
  
Brigitte wags a finger in the air, “I don’t think I could handle seeing Hana Song cry.”   
  
Hana shrugs, “do not watch my live streams then. I once got so frustrated in a Cuphead run that I broke a mouse.”   
  
Brigitte clicks her tongue, “I thought you said you didn’t cry?”

“I cry liquid gold and weep dollar signs,” she tries to say in a suave way, if anything about her could be suave.

Brigitte gives her a discerning look, “is that from your reddit page you made?”  
  
Hana scuffs her feet on the sidewalk and looks away, “maybe.”   


Brigitte just laughs, “can’t say I need liquid gold, but I’ll keep you in mind if I ever need free wedding bands.”  
  
_Wedding bands._

Her heart thumps in her chest, maybe she too was randomly imagining their matrimony after thirty minutes of romantic finger squeezing. Maybe Hana was about to buy a u-haul truck.

Her breath catches in her throat as she recognizes the street with her hotel on it, a wide sidewalk leading up to the side of a large beige building.

This where she dropped her off.

 _Play it cool Hana_ , she yells in her own head, y _ou offered to let you walk you back for a reason._

 _Cool, cool, cool_ , she repeats the word in her head like an animated mantra, over and over in circles. COOL.

She slows down their pace, Brigitte was chattering about her first birthday she remembered and that was a good sound. Hana wishes she was paying attention, but she was instead eyeing the approaching hotel like an oncoming tsunami wave. The hotel where she stayed. And would say goodbye to Brigitte.

She needed get her head in the game.

“.... and then on my first prom night I threw up on the guy…”  
  
Hana shakes her head and wishes she could read the manual on this somewhere, or slip out her phone and just search ‘kissing???’ in all caps. That’s what people do when they like each other and are saying goodbye, right? She suddenly didn’t remember.

She liked her, she also liked her, their hands were together.

Hana goes through the possible outcomes in her head and everything in her body feels like it’s vibrating. She had kissed before, she tries to remember what it feels like and which body parts it involved.

She sees the front doors of the hotel loom closer and closer, her ears ring and she swallows almost painfully. She turns around in one swift motion.

"THANKS FOR THE VACATION,” she says at almost the top of her voice.

Brigitte stops in place and her face looks like a slightly dazed labrador, “no problem?” She says hesitantly before gathering herself and smiling again, “it was really fun. I think I needed a day off too.”

Hana’s face felt like it was a blazing forest fire all on its own, heart pounding in her chest and she let’s go of Brigitte’s hand. “Lemme throw this out real quick,” she locates the nearest trash can on the curb and dunks what’s left of her kebab in it.

_COOL, COOL, COOL._

She takes deep even breaths, wipes her sweaty hands off on her legs and walks back up to Brigitte, back completely straight and teeth clenched. She forces herself to not turn and run away and play Team Fortress for forty hours straight instead of this.

She was good at Team Fortress. She wasn’t sure about this.

Brigitte looks at her appraisingly, “you okay?” She asks simply and Hana curses in her head, _shit, she noticed_.

Hana just tilts her head up, “I’ve just,” she takes a step toward her, her heart pounding. “It’s been awhile...” She was mumbling to herself and Brigitte was still blinking.

“Well,” she smiles softly, “I just hope you’re feeling alright now.”   
  
Hana nods mutely, “I’m feeling great.” She says in a smooth voice, “it’s been a wonderful day Brigitte.”   
  
She takes another step forward, her thoughts going in all directions like runny egg yolk.

Brigitte puts a warm hand on her shoulder and Hana almost jumps, _it’s time, time, time, time_.

“We’ll have to do it again sometime.”  
  
She gulps, “yep.” Hana lifts her chin up. “It’s been awesome.” She leans forward slowly, slowly, like waves beating cliff sides smooth over eons. Hana eases her eyes shut.

“I guess this is goodbye for now.”

The hand was still on her shoulder, Hana puckers her lips, clenching her hands together and clutching them to her chest. She lifts herself up for the kiss.

She waits for the soft contact, the sweet collide, her whole world blowing up in fireworks. And then she waits some more.

Her nerves begin to fray, she tries to lift herself up higher. She waits.

“Um,” Brigitte clears her throat and Hana cracks an eye open, “Hana what are you doing?”  
  
Hana just stands there dumbly for a second, a long second. Brigitte wasn’t moving, she wasn’t moving toward her.

Hana throws her arms in the air and dances backward, “you’re right, you’re right,” she cries out, “it’s too soon, it’s just the first date, we shouldn’t rush these things.”  
  
Brigitte’s entire face falls open and her eyes go wide, “date?”   
  
Hana’s entire world comes crashing down around her, her whole body tenses, “Oh no.”   
  
“You…this...” Brigitte gestures around herself weakly, “date?” She repeats again in obvious confusion.

“Oh no no no,” Hana takes several scrambling steps backward, “but but.”  
  
Brigitte cocks her head this, her mouth hanging open, Hana looks down at her hands.

“But,” She stammers, “we held hands.” She looks down at her hands and wonders if maybe she had just dreamt all that up along the way. She wouldn’t doubt it.

Brigitte focuses on her with a glazed over expression, “I thought,” she says weakly, “I read that in Korea friends hold hands? Like a lot more. I thought,” Brigitte’s entire body goes rigid, “I thought you wanted to be friends?”  
  
Hana yanks at her hair, “oh fuck.” She steps backward until her back hits the wall, “please forget that I just tried to kiss you then. Since we were,” she makes an angry sound in the back of her throat, “platonically holding hands I guess.”

“I-I,” Hana doesn’t look up as Brigitte reels, probably from second-hand embarrassment.

Hana hides her face and turns around, “I have to go.”  
  
“Wait-” Brigitte reaches out.

“Have a good night,” Hana turns swiftly back toward the door, her eyes welling up. Maybe she really was a crier. “Please don’t message me again for the next couple years until I live this down.”

“Wait!” Brigitte calls out again, but Hana was booking it into the hotel lobby, feet sliding on the smooth linoleum and vision blurring over. She darts for the heavy door leading to the stairs and sprints up them two at a time, her lungs burning and face streaming.

“Idiot,” she rubs at her eyes, “idiot!”

“Hana!” She still hears Brigitte’s voice but she doesn’t stop to listen to her awkward condolences or pleasant ‘clearing the air’ speech.

Hana crashes into her hotel door, thrusts it open and bangs the door shut so hard behind her she’s pretty sure the picture frames rattle.

She tosses herself onto the bed and lets out one single, long, desperate wail. “Oh my God.” Fat wet tears dribble down her cheeks and into her hair, she can’t bring herself to care. Maybe she wasn’t meant to date, maybe she never really deserved it.   
  
“Fuck,” she whispers and balls herself up, tucking her knees into herself and praying. She doesn’t come out just as the insistant knocking comes rapping at the door.

She doesn’t look up.

\---------------------------

“GO AWAY!” Hana yells through her tears as she huddles on the bed, “I can’t deal with this right now,” she jerks her head toward the door,  “can’t you let me be mortally embarrassed in peace?”

_Rap rap_

“Hana!” Brigitte had followed her, “just open up, let’s talk.”  
  
“Fuck no,” she felt like flipping off the door. “Let’s just go our separate ways, be friendly at the meetings, and never speak of this again.”   
  
“I don’t want that.”

Hana just groans, “Please, Brigitte. I…” Her mouth opens and closes uselessly, “I can’t.” She says truthfully this time, just as her heart squeezes and she feels her stomach almost bottom out.

“I’m coming in.”  
  
“No you aren’t!” Hana grabs for her bag, “I’m putting my headphones in and we aren’t talking again.” She says desperately, “just go back to your own hotel.”   
  
“No, come on, let me-”   
  
“LA LA LA,” she puts her headphones in, “Now I’m suffering alone in peace like I wanted~” She sings and turns her volume all the way up, just the booming sound of BigBang and her own crumbling insides. She could use some nothing noise for at least a while.

She hears more banging at the door but doesn’t acknowledge it.

 _You are a competitor_ , she reminds herself and bites the inside of her cheek, _you are a soldier._

She digs her nails into her thighs, _you are a weapon_. You weren’t meant to grow old holding hands with some girl and putting aside the dreams of explosions, blood, and soot.

It didn’t matter, nothing mattered, she holds her stomach as her body starts to heave with the body-shaking little sobs. “Fuck.”

She hears another bang, but this time it wasn’t the door. Hana jerks her head up as she hears a single clang against the hotel window. Hana sniffs and wipes at her face, “if that’s you Talon,” she calls out, “you better get ready to fucking die this time.”

She stumbles on number legs out, she hears another clang and Hana bares her teeth in a snarl. “Goddammit.” She wrenches the curtains aside like a wobbly drunk. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

Her eyes go wide when she sees Brigitte perched on the small balcony there, panting and holding a hoverboard she must have burrowed to glide her way up to the second story.

She places the board down and faces the window, sweat was dripping down her temple. She pushes her hair back and balances on the ledge, “Hana,” she mouths, “FOR JUST A MINUTE.”

Hana pouts slightly, but she does slowly tug her earphones out, she stiffly reaches for the window, she opens it up just a crack.

“What?” She says darkly, “you want to platonically make nice now?”

Brigitte’s eyes dart back and forth, searching her for something, “that’s not fair.”  
  
Hana straightens up and wipes at her cheeks again, she takes a deep rattling breath, she gathers herself slightly, “you’re right, okay. Sorry.” She steadies herself, “look, Brigitte, you’re a nice girl and I know you want to do the right thing, but I’m a little-”   
  
“I think you’re cute.”

Hana freezes in place, her chin lifting up, sticky tears still drying her cheeks, she stands perfectly still, “Good? Lucio thinks I’m cute too, see? We’ll all be good friends. Maybe not today, because I am a literal mess but I guess whenever.”

“No,” Brigitte takes a step forward and Hana sees the other girls cheeks flaring a deep pink, “I think you’re _really_ cute.”

Hana cocks her head to the side, “so does Cosmo?”  
  
Brigitte groans and rans a hand through her loose strands of hair, “God I’m shit at this.”   
  
Hana makes a face at her, “look, buddy, I promise I’ll send my condolences, but on like, another day? Maybe? When my heart doesn’t feel like it’s been pulverized.”   
  
Brigitte lifts herself up and holds her gaze, Hana’s heart pulses painfully and she wishes it wouldn’t. “I’m shit at this,” she repeats, “I never thought… someone like you would like me.”   
  
“Someone like me?” Hana just tilts her head to the side.

Brigitte takes a deep breath in, she exhales softly, “I knew it.”  
  
Hana wrinkles her brow, “that I had a huge gay gross crush on you?”   
  
“No,” Brigitte’s eyes went wide, “I thought you wanted to be friends. Because you’re cute and a veteran hero and like. Amazing and smart and funny.”   
  
Hana shifts in place, “I’m kinda of the worst, but I appreciate the sentiment.” She sniffs, “so back at you friend-o. Platonically.” She adds at the end and looks miserably down at her shoes.   
  
“Man, I knew it,” Brigitte tisks again.

Hana sighs, “knew what?”  
  
She feels a soft touch against her cheek, “that I wouldn’t be able to handle seeing you cry.”   
  
Hana scrunches her nose up, “well buddy, I guess you lost that one.” She wipes her face, “I’ll be good again. I guess. Just give me a couple days and a laptop.”

Brigitte’s eyes go soft, “I wish this was easy.”  
  
Hana rolls her eyes, “I’m trying not to make this whole thing about me, but I’m kinda going through something right now.”   
  
“I’m so sorry,” Brigitte’s voice wobbles and Hana looks up again, Brigitte’s thumb goes to rub a tear out of her eye, catching the doplet and smearing it away. “This is all my fault. Could I try one more time?”   
  
Hana’s mouth falls open slowly, she sniffs, loudly, “try?”   
  
“Hana Song,” Brigitte takes a step forward, “I like you.”   
  
Hana groans and buries her face in her hands, “okay. Cool. But the problem was that I liked you in a very specific wa-”   
  
“I like you,” Brigitte repeats quickly, “like like you. And your cocky laugh and weird jokes and the fact I feel completely on my ass every time I talk to you. And your, I mean, I like you.” Brigitte was stammering, “Romantically?”   
  
Hana feels like she had the wind knocked out of her, “as in?” She asks numbly, her brain short-circuiting.

“Like, you know,” Brigitte gestures loosely in the air, “with flowers. And candles, and how, um, you know. You looked good in a bathing suit. You know, with your body. Good.”  
  
Hana, to own surprise, starts giggling, “body good?”   
  
Brigitte covers her face with one hand, “body very good?”   
  
“Well,” Hana hiccups gently and looks back up, “I’m sort of a little mortified right now buuuuut,”   
  
“ _You’re_ mortified?” Brigitte looks over at her, “I just missed a chance to kiss the girl I like because I couldn’t imagine her liking me back.” Brigitte puts her hand out, “And then I made her cry.”   
  
Hana looks between Brigitte’s hand and then back to her face. She swallows, “I’m sure,” she says a little breathlessly, “you could have another chance. Maybe.”   
  
“Maybe?”   
  
“Maybe,” Hana gives a cheeky smile, “if she asks nicely.”   
  
“And says sorry,” Brigitte’s winces slightly, “I am so sorry.”   
  
Hana was still looking at her outstretched hand, “I’m not very good at this either.”

“Well,” Brigitte puts her large hands on both of Hana’s shoulders, “if you’re still willing,” she stands inches from her, “I’d like to try again.”  
  
Hana tilts her chin up, “you want to start again?”   
  
She just nods, “Hana,” she says sweetly, “would you like to go on a date with me?”   
  
Hana gives a wobbly smile, “what? With my body good?”   
  
Brigitte blows air out of her nose, “I’m not going to live that down, am I?”   
  
Hana moves slowly, a glacier covering the continent slowly, it’s brief and sharp, she kisses her nose. “No.”   
  
Brigitte pulls her forward, “thank you.”   


Hana wraps her arms around her neck and they stay there for a long moment, laughing and cursing themselves.


	10. Two Little Words

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> changed this chapter up!

Hana looks at herself in the mirror, she sees the imprints of long hours in front of a screen, two puffy red eyes, and a pair of cracked lips that lip balm blessed by the pope couldn’t even save. She had been biting them.

She looked lean and pale in the lowlights of her room and several bruises were still blooming around her shoulder and tip of her chin. She shrugged on a shawl and added some more eye shadow to her bloodshot gaze. She pinches her cheeks and sees only worry lines there.

She had been voted as one of the ‘Top Five Most F*ckable Overwatch Members of the Year’ by MacGyver magazine a couple days ago. Her section started with ‘Our little bunny might be a year older, but that only takes away a little appeal from her skin-tight suit and fiery attitude. Damn, what some of our readers wouldn’t give to be one of those joysticks she handles.’

The publisher had also recently been trolled so hard that their website shut down from the number of spam jpegs uploaded to their server at once. Most of them were just the ‘u mad bro?’ over and over again. A resurging heroic relic.

In related news, Hana now owed Genji like, a bunch of desert cups and motor oil (she still wasn’t completely sure what he ate, but she was willing to cover anything in chocolate and give it a try).

She also knew that this girl with the cracked lips and callused knuckles and padded suit was not the girl they were talking about in the magazine. Not that she wanted to be.

She sort of wished though, tonight of all nights, she could be some sort of girl, instead of say a shapeless blob that grabbed a controller and throttled her way to number one. Number one is cool until they ask you to be something else as well.

Like, personable and datable and sexy outside of the way everyone already wants you to be sexy.

Hana took several rapid breaths, chest heaving and thoughts racketing back and forth in her frontal lobe like an Olympic ping-pong match. She was going into overdrive early, a feeling of some sort of downward spiral coming on that could only end in her Final Form.

Early life: video game internet sensation

Middle life: military gun hero for her country and world

Late life: mad conqueror who got sick of being @ed in playboy bunny posts with ‘u? ;)’

Final form: ‘Empress Hana Song, Took over Antarctica and then fucked off somewhere’

Hana would kind of like to fuck off somewhere right now.

She turns around instead, losing her marbles and turning into a villian was just her back up plan, she goes over to her computer instead. She flattens her loose skirt down and pushes her bangs back before she glances at her phone and considers this all over again.

_4:00 7/17_

She stares intently at three little bubble typing dots and her mouth hangs open, she sucked in a sharp, violent breath as she watched.

_B: u set-up?_

Her fingers hover the little buttons for a solid minute before she jerks herself into action and starts typing.

_Me: hit me with it._

A bright ring comes from her laptop. A little green text popped up: Answer Call?

Hana reaches, her thoughts blanking and body rigidly moving on its own accord. “Here we go…” She gulps, “20 years in the making.”  
  
She hits the accept button and sits back, she had kept the lights low and her unfolded laundry stuffed into the closet.

Internet: check

Make-up: check

Casual yet flattering outfit: check

She was trying out this skype-across-the-entire-world-with-your-crush thing.

It had been three days and Hana had spent most of that time thumbing through old albums and playing Halo 4 on repeat (she killed the mother queen alien at least 5 times). An image sputters to life and she sees a figure waving at her.

The figure was in a bright yellow bedroom with a large window to her left and tall pine trees poking through in the distance. The walls had a few posters on them, all of which were of heroes both old and new.

Hana can’t see much else, maybe half of a work-out set and a bobblehead of Einstein, but she can’t be completely certains. Brigitte meets her eye, she pauses, “heh.”

Hana sits up completely straight and starts waving “hey you!” She had practiced that a couple times in front of the mirror. They both grin for a second.

“Hi there.” Brigitte’s voice was somehow a little softer and her features sharper from over 7,000 kilometers away.

She cocks her head to the side and seems to take Hana in, a long pause descends as she examines something there. Hana shifts from side to side and tries to think of every bit of small talk she ever learned.

 _What kind of ducks do you like?_ She doesn’t get there.

Brigitte’s eyes flick up and down, “You look good.”  
  
Hana’s eyes go wide and she gapes like a fish trying to breathe air, “youm.”   
  
Brigitte’s eyebrows raise, “youm?”   
  
“You too!” She says shrilly, “and stuff.”   
  
Brigitte’s features relax and she looks like she’s owning the air instead of existing in it. “Youm too.”   
  
Hana puffs her cheeks out, “Okay, I probably deserve that. But it’s still going on the list.”   
  
“List?” Brigitte’s eyebrows raise.

Hana wags a finger in the air, “revenge list. Writing ‘youm teasing’ right under ‘general teasing.’”  
  
Brigitte chuckles, her image shaking across the screen, “I thought we went over this?”

Hana shakes her head, “the key to success is repetition. That’s why I enjoy making the same mistakes over and over.”

Brigitte frowns slightly, “like?”

“You know, chores, cussing out mods, getting sacked in Street Fighter IV. Everytime,” she waves her hand airly, “though,” she pauses, realizing she knew she might have to do it now or she’d chicken out later. “I am trying to change my ways this time.”

She doesn’t meet Brigitte’s eyes as she says that, her heart thumps in her ears. She glances at the box by her feet and holds herself perfectly still. _Okay, okay, okay,_ she readies herself.

“You okay?” Brigitte was still looking at her, staring as if to open her up piece by piece, unpeeling her like an orange until only citrus and questions are left.

Hana purses her lips and glances back and forth across the room, “Okay,” she hunches over slightly, “I made this and I promised myself I’d show it to you first thing. Just so we don’t… you know. Again. But don’t laugh at me.”   
  
Brigitte’s sobers up faster than a marathon runner on an IV drip. “I wouldn’t.” She ducks her chin and her voice goes low, “this is the part where I actually wanted to apologize again.”   
  
Hana wags a finger in the air, “This is the part where I do my thing first.”   
  
“Wait,” Brigitte jerks toward the camera, she reminded her of old person without depth perception. “I gotta say, sorry. Sorry, like a million times. That all that happened, and then I left.”   
  
“Ugh,” Hana waves her hands wildly in the air, “not accepted sweetheart. Wait your turn.”   
  
“But-”   
  
“Look at this and then tap on the glass. Once for yes, twice for no.” Hana ducks down out of sight, “and then like, wait for me to be done shrieking in a field somewhere.”   
  
“What is it?” Brigitte ventures carefully.

Hana’s heart was thumping like a jack-rabbit in heat, she reaches below her desk and pops up a little square box that smelled like dry flour and icing. She hides her burning face and looks up at the ceiling as she holds the box up to camera view.

“This is a first, so don’t like, tweet about it.” Hana mutters, though she doubts she can hear her.  
  
She waits. Five seconds, ten seconds. Her heart speeds up to ‘hot wheels on cocaine’ levels and she has to resist diving under her covers and texting Lucio that nothing was good ever. That Skype dates don’t even work.

She hears something she could only describe as a ‘squeak.’

Hana peeks over the edge of her cake box and goes completely rigid. Brigitte was covering her mouth and her face was completely red, she was wiping at a pair of watery eyes.

“Oh no,” Hana jerks the cake box down, “oh fuck.”  
  
“No no,” Brigitte says as she presses her palms into her eyes, “it’s not what it looks like.”   
  
“Did I make you cry?”   
  
Brigitte peeks out from in between her fingers, “would that be fair since I made you cry?”   
  
Hana sniffs loudly, “technically, yes. But I was saving that for the third date.”   
  
Brigitte’s face breaks open for a moment, “don’t make me laugh.” She giggles and covers her mouth, “I promised I wouldn’t laugh.”   
  
Hana pouts slightly, “but you’re laughing on the inside at this?” She points to the cake.   
  
“No,” Brigitte waves her hands in the air, “I’m just,” she takes a deep breath from all those leagues away. “Taking it all in.”   
  
Hana raises her eyebrows and glances down at her cake, it had a bright purple icing that just said, ‘IS THIS A DATE?’ With a smaller lettering underneath it that just said, ‘CAN IT BE?’

Words scream in the back of Hana’s head: _she hates it._ She hangs her head.

“Never tell Reinhardt I’m this embarrassing as a person,” Hana says just loud enough to hear, her stomach dropping and color draining from her face. “This was a dumb idea, fuck. Just. I mean, forget it.”

“No, no,” Brigitte dives for the camera and gets comically close to it for a second, “god dang this timing.” She shakes it slightly, “Omniacs should attack other cities.” She growls lightly to herself.

Hana shrugged, “duty called.” She looks down at her hands, “I don’t blame you anyway for not wanting any part of my desperate attempt to t-”   
  
“WAIT.” She yells, “No, I mean, YES to it,” clutched at her hands as Hana glances up. “Fuck. Yes.”   
  
Hana lifts her head up, “did you just curse?”   
  
Brigitte sucked in a deep heavy breath, her cheeks going pink, “I was hoping that would get your attention.”

“For what?” She felt like turning into a bug.

“Please,” Brigitte begs a little, “don’t have that look on your face.”  
  
“What look?” She touches her own nose delicately and looks away again.

Brigitte shakes her head, “gimme a minute. I need to… phrase this right.”  
  
“Well um,” Hana glances back and forth. “I’m all ears. And 40% bad at lit class and 50% talking too much and 75% useless mario bros facts. And 100% st-”   
  
“Hana,” Brigitte says quickly, “I am so sorry. And, I’m,” she visibly gulped, “I should be quicker. Should’ve been quicker.”   
  
“Quicker?” She squints slightly at her and wishes she could turn the brightness levels up on her computer, but it was already pumped up to the max.

She pinches her own cheeks, “YES, yes to the cake.” She takes in a bright, excited expression, making Hana lean forward.

“My cake?” She checks, “like, the one from just now.”  
  
Brigitte rolled her eyes, “YES, if you want to I mean. With all disclosures in place.”   
  
Hana was still processing this, “Uh, okay, yeah, warning labels in place.”   
  
She puts a finger in the air, “exactly. Except, only if you’ll have me after that whole thing I pulled. Yeah.” Her face flushes, “And please don’t feel bad,” She was mumbling now.

“What?” Hana reaches to plug in her headphones to hear better, “one sec.”  
  
Brigitte cleared her throat, “please don’t feel bad,” her eyes were wide and open, “a cake asking me out is genuinely the sweetest thing anyone’s ever done for me. It’s not dumb, it’s… awesome.”   
  
“Awesome?”   
  
“Like, the very best, and like,” she shifts from side to side, “I’m not great at this either.” She cringes, “I skipped most of the dating in highschool.”   
  
Hana bounces in her seat, “me too.” She pushed her cake away, “I just thought of the cake thing since I watched a bunch of the Degrassi fifth reboot and it’s what Stephanie did to get Mike back.”   
  
“What?”   
  
“Netflix had a special,” she waves her hand in the air, “full disclosure, I spent a lot of time trash-talking people online and now my filter is kinda non-existent. Sooo, I say a lot of irrelevant things sometimes. Full disclosure.”   
  
Brigitte grins and puts her chin on her hand, “Full disclosure? I like hearing what’s on people’s minds.”   
  
“Oh boy,” Hana shakes her head, “you’re going to regret that.”

Brigitte chuckles, “I don’t think so.” She looks around the room for a second and then back to the camera, “and if we’re doing this… full disclosure, I haven’t cut my toenails in two months.”  
  
“Why?”   
  
She shrugs, “they’re far away.”   
  
Hana laughs, “full disclosure?” She winks, “I actually have a foot fetish, so I guess this is over.”   
  
Brigitte’s face goes slack, “I’ll get out the nail clippers.”   
  
Hana shakes her head, “kidding! I’d be dating Hanzo if I was that into feet. That guy keeps up like every known foot care routine under the sun according to McCree.”   
  
Brigitte looks down, “I’m going to try and forget that actually.” She scrunches her nose, “full disclosure,” she sighs, “never meet your heroes.”   
  
Hana laughs, “full disclosure? I try not to meet myself on a daily basis.”   
  
Brigitte lifts her chin and makes heavy eye-contact with her, “that’s a shame.” A slow smile fills her face, “I hear she bakes first-date cakes and thoroughly charms very thick-headed girls.”   
  
Hana’s whole body seizes up and she waits for the rigamortis to set in, she covers her face and groans. “I’m going to wake up in five seconds and be making out with my pillow, I just know it.”   
  
Brigitte tuts, “see? Cute. You should give her a try.”   
  
Hana keels over into her lap and curls into herself, she only glances up over the edge of the desk once, “full disclosure?” She says very softly, “I talk too much and don’t say anything. You’ll kill me if you keep up this whole ‘openness’ thing.”

“Well, you won’t be alone in death,” Brigitte says softly, “I just cried over being given a cake from a couple thousand kilometers away.” Brigitte looks up and off to the side, “who knows what would happen if you tried… anything else.”  
  
Hana eyes her sharply, her thoughts fuzzing over, “like what?”

Brigitte seems to gulp and shift in her seat, she glances behind her, and then back to the computer, “Whatever you want.”  
  
Hana squeaks and puts her face down again, “so yes to the cake?”   
  
Brigitte gives a bubbling laugh, “didn’t you hear me? Hell yes.”   
  
Hana unfurls herself slowly, like a house cat coming from under a very cramped corner of the closet. “Actually,” she gives a slow smile, “I remember it a little differently.” She leans forward, “say it again.”   
  
Brigitte frowns deeply, “You know I’m already down fifty cents. My mom’s swear jar is like a constant presence in this household and she has bat-ears.”   
  
Hana bounces up and down, “say it again, say it again, you’ll feel awesome. I always feel better after blasting someone and calling them a fuck-face bald eagle thumping bad lay on a tuesday night with their mother watching-”   
  
Brigitte wets her lips, “yes, I’ve seen the live streams.”   
  
Hana laughs and meets her eyes, “see what I’m talking about? No filter. You’ve been given the disclosure you know.”

“I know,” Brigitte hums, “Full disclosure, I always read warning labels anyway.”  
  
Hana frowns slightly, “Are you reading me?”   
  
Brigitte raises her eyebrows, “how could I?” She says lowly, “you’re… full of surprises.”   
  
“Good surprises?”   
  
She gives her A Look, “always.”   
  
Hana bites her lip and then grins, “anything else?”

“Well…” Something tenses in Brigitte’s jawline, she shrinks a little bit in her seat, “full disclosure?” She says softly before guiltily looking back up, “I’m not very good at telling people how I feel, k? Just so you know.” She frowns, “I have a few...shields up.”   
  
Hana’s brow furrows and lifts her face a little higher, “wait, is that a pun?”   
  
Brigitte sits back up again, “I mean, full disclosure, my brother’s say I only tell dad jokes.” She hunches over slightly, “and not… great ones?” 

“Full disclosure?” Hana gives her a sly look, “that’s pretty hot.”  
  
Brigitte tosses her head back and laughs, “I don’t know whether to cry again or just pop the question.”   
  
“Will I go to Overwatch prom with you?” Hana fluffs her hair, “Yes.”   
  
Brigitte laughs again and shakes her head, “that would not go well.”   
  
She nods, “I would have to shoot myself in the foot after Winston has to stop Orisa from arresting McCree and Mercy from drinking her weight in mini-champagnes before the music even starts.”

Brigitte’s nose wrinkled as she smiled with her whole face, “I could pick you up in Reinhart's old truck.”  
  
Hana bites her bottom lip and puts her elbows on the desk, “would you wear a suit?”   
  
Brigitte's face goes very serious, “we could both wear suits.”   
  
Hana grins widely, “I look rockin’ in purple jackets.”   
  
“Good but you have to embroider ‘taken’ on the back of it,” Brigitte says hotly and Hana raises her eyebrows.

She cocks her head to the side, “like the movie with Liam Neeson in it? ‘Cause I will accept your movie tastes in all forms. For at least a night.”  
  
Brigitte makes a face at her, “like ‘taken,’ like. Not for those guys at MacGyver.”

Hana pushes her bangs back and slumps on the desk in front of her, “so you saw that, huh?”

Brigitte shakes her head, “Can I punch people at our fictional prom?”  
  
Hana perks up, “Yeah. That’s pretty hot. Knock some teeth in, take out a giant hammer. I’m there for it.”   
  
Brigitte’s mouth quirks up, “full disclosure?”   
  
Hana nods slowly, “always.”   
  
“I can be a little…” She hums softly, “jealous.”

Hana bounces in her seat, “that works for me.”  
  
Brigitte peers up shyly, “yeah? Because I’m not known to half-ass things.”   
  
Hana practically vibrates in place, “well, if it helps, I usually repulse most people within the span of 4 to 5 sentences, so no worries. Though you can beat up internet randos if it piques your fancy.”   
  
Brigitte sighs, “don’t tempt me.”   
  
Hana hums deeply, “I’ll try not to. Even if that’s like in my top ten Mad-Conqueror Hana fantasy’s.”   
  
“The what?”   
  
Hana blows a stray piece of her hair out of her face, “nothing. That’s second date material.”   
  
Brigitte blinks a couple times, as if sobering up from a bong hit from the cosmic universe itself. “Sooo,” she draws out the vowel like she wants to hook it on a fishing line and reel in moby dick. Her nostrils flare, “this is a date?”   
  
Hana’s entire chest squeezes in place, she thinks fast, “it could be.” She looks up at the ceiling and sticks her bottom lip out, “if I hear those two little words again.”   
  
“Uh.”   
  
Hana winks fiercely, “you know the ones.”   
  
Brigitte chuckles and strokes the side of her camera, “is that the way to your heart?”   
  
Hana shrugs loosely, "I’m easy.”   
  
Brigitte shakes her head, “I’d have to beg to differ.”   
  
“What?” Hana’s eyes go wide, “you think I’m ‘hard’ already? It’s the first date!”

Brigitte’s face is smothered in red, “no, no, not like that. I mean, um, just that you’re like. You’re uh-”  
  
Hana snorts and adjusts her monitor, “I’m messing with you.” 

Brigitte pushes one of her hair strands back, “I’m going to have to get used to that.”  
  
Hana nods, “I mean… if you want a second cake. I mean, if you'd like to, go to… a second cake?” She lets out a ramble of words that might make one whole thought.

Brigitte glances both directions, “I guess I do need it spelled out for me.”  
  
Hana squirms in place, “I was an ace in spelling in grade school.”   
  
Brigitte gives a cheeky grin, she mouths the next words ‘fuck yeah.’   
  
Hana blinks slowly, “I can’t hear you.”   
  
Brigitte rolls her eyes, “fine. Ask me again.”   
  
Hana takes a deep shaking breath and steels every nerve in her body. “Full disclosure?” She whispers.   
  
“Yeah?”   
  
Hana leans in close, “I’m terrified.”   
  
Brigitte whole body softens, “good.”   
  
“Good?”   
  
Brigitte tucks her chin down, “I mean, like second date terrified or should I start wearing non-threatening bonnets in your presence?”

Hana clears her throat, “bonnets for good measure, but I’ll take a second date. If you’d like to. Try again.” She looks both directions, “maybe in person?”  
  
Brigitte’s face is slow, slow like glaciers, like rainwater dripping down rooftops, slow like lazy sundays and waking up without an alarm clock set. She shoots up.

“Like this?” She mouths.

The words can't get out of Hana's mouth fast enough, “Yes. Go on a second date with me?” Hana asks again quickly. “In person.”

“Fuck,” Brigitte puffs out her chest and yells at the top of her lungs, “yes!”

Hana starts cheering and clapping, “woo! Atta girl.”

“Fuck yes!”  
  
They’re both laughing and flushed after Brigitte yells with her whole frame and Hana is giddy with her own whirling movements and happy revelations. “Woo!”

They high-five over the camera.

“That was-”  
  
“Yeah.”   
  
“Same.”   
  
“Brigitte!” A shrill voice comes in from a distance, “Brigitte Lindholm, what in God’s name was that?”   
  
Brigitte ducks down and reaches for her screen, “gotta go.”   
  
“Wait,” Hana fidgets back and forth, “I’ve barely disclosed all my junk.”   
  
Brigitte gives a small private smile, “well,” she glances between the door and then Hana, “I have it on good authority,” she leans forward, “that we have time.”   
  
Hana bounces in place, “promise?”   
  
“Brigitte!” A knock comes at the door, “your little brother was in the living room when he heard that. I knew that last mission wasn’t good for you, Overwatch is getting to you.”   
  
Brigitte goes stiff, “gotta go.”   
  
Hana starts waving frantically, “tell her it was all my fault.”   
  
“I can’t tell her,” Brigitte gulps, “I’ll see you.” She says quickly, “as soon as we can.”   
  
Hana’s entire body tingles, “that would… that would work for me.”   
  
They are both waving and shouting and trying to disconnect but neither of them actually is.

“Brigitte!”  
  
“Ack,” Brigitte’s finger hangs over the ‘end call button,’ “I have to go pay the piper. I really will see you.”   
  
“Imma eat all of this cake, so don’t wait up for me.” She picks up the box.

Brigitte gives her a thumbs up, “eat it slow.”   
  
“Sexy slow?”   
  
“No, just don’t get a stomachache,” Brigitte was still looking at the door, “I mean, if you want. But mom can’t be-”   
  
“I’m coming in.”   
  
Brigitte jumps and Hana shakes her head, “in-laws.”   
  
“Who is that?” Mrs. Lindholm asks as she stands in a bright white flower shirt and work pants, Brigitte turns her back to the camera.   
  
“Just another hero mom,” the daughter and mother break out into rapid swedish and then the screen goes dark. Hana touches the camera tentatively, “have a good morning.”   
  
She sighs and the whole world is spinning, the sun was rising and setting all at once. She gets up, sits down, gets up again and then collapses on the floor before kicking her feet in the air and repeating to herself over and over again. “She wants to see me again. She wants to see me in person.”


	11. Babe

Hana pressed her skirt down, running her hands down her waist and tugging at the end of the material. She scrunched her nose up, “too short?” She asks her reflection and pinches her lips together, scanning her reflection up and down, “not short enough?”  
  
She turns around in frantic circles, eyeing the bruise on her chin and making sure it’s properly hidden behind heaps of foundation, she pokes the bags under her eyes and sighs. Hana takes deep breaths that hopes that creates the illusion of being calm and emotionally capable- for her own sake.

Hana pinches her cheeks until they are pink and makes faces at herself in the mirror. “You are hot fucking stuff.” She puffs her chest out and jabs her thumb at it, “you. Are. The. Boss.”  
  
Her takes her five seconds to deflate again and look at her feet, “Ugh.” She slumps forward and her reflection flashes her a sympathetic look.

“Not short enough?” She hikes her skirt up one more time and realizes that just reveals her Thundercats underwear (Cats. For just in case). She groans and wishes she could go find the underneath of her covers again.

What did normal people do in situations like this? Die? She was considering knocking on Reaper’s door and having tea, they could have the usual chat: die, die, die, end quote. She’s sure he’d like the company.

Hana primps her crimped hair and pushes her fake eyelashes, “too much?” She asks her reflection softly, which was still giving her a: ‘dude. Come on.’ look.

It had been three hours, Hana was considering giving up a corporeal body and switching to ‘asexually-reproducing globular mass in space.’ She rests her forehead on the cool glass and closes her eyes, slumping her shoulders down and exhaling.

_She was doing this._

She straightens up after a solid minute, reaching for her phone and scrolling through the last dozen messages quickly.

She scans through the last couple days.

Me: are you sure Seoul is okay? I can still come to Stockholm.

B: Um, I’m not sure if you’re ready for my mom yet, really. Seoul is good, I *want* to come to Seoul again

Me: it’s so far, are you sure it’s okay?

B: definitely! It all sounds good

Me: I mean...

B: Hana, I watched you tell a TV reported last summer that ‘Seoul was the Beyonce of places. There’s only one and everywhere else is just trying to catch the sweat off it’s brow.’

Me: :(

B: :)

Me: I say a lot of things

B: yes! And I’d like to hear more.

Me: (I’m so nervous I could puke)

B: (are we talking in parenthesis now? And it’s okay. Me too :)

Me: (this is whispering. So it’s fake-talking, nothing is real)

B: (ooh)

Me: (I’ll meet you at the airport??)

B: actually, I also have an Overwatch security meeting that day, so I’ll come in early and then meet you at your place, how does that sound?

Me: (like I’ll lose my lunch)

B: I’ll bring extra bags then! :D

B: I can’t wait

Me: d;ifjsaf

B: adfjaf?

Me: I hate you.

B: See you for the you-know-what!

B: (date)

B: (but whispered)

Me: see you^^;

Hana was already sweating through her shirt and waiting for her senses to come back to her: touch, feel, taste, impending sense of doom. Images flash behind her eyes: her dad saying joking about how her social skills had stalled in the 7th grade and never progressed after that. Her mom laughing about how it was good she was good at video games since her marriage prospects were so low.

Losing it at the the word ‘pangus’ on her live streams just yesterday.

How she didn’t know what she was doing.

Hana hears a knock on the door from the front of her house.

“Oh no.” She reaches for her bag just in case, just in case she pukes, just in case she has to toss something on her back and jump out the window.

She hears another knock. “Hello?”  
  
Hana shivers and forces herself onward, “coming!” She gives her mirror self a forlorn look before darting into the hall and back toward Bridgitte. Bridgitte. Bridgitte.

Bridgitte.

Her heart spasms in her chest and her feet were flying, weightless. “Coming!” Her nerves turn into a giddy joy for a moment.

Bridgitte.

Then they drag back into a cold ten-ton weight in her stomach as she actually reaches for the door. “Fuck.” She whispers to herself and feels the sweat drop.

She hears the next knock, “Hana,” someone sings, “you alright in there?”  
  
She gulps, “no.” She yanks the door open and her heart seizes up in her throat, she takes a step back from a bouquet the size of her head being shoved through the door.

“Good evening!” Brigitte was bright red as she held up an array of red roses and baby’s breath. Her eyes are wide and unblinking, “You look gorgeous.”

She arched her eyebrows, “can you even see me over this thing?” She grasps for the flowers and Brigitte peaks over their large girth.

“I’m going off memory.”  
  
“Ugh,” Hana wrinkles her nose, “I’ve actually turned into an ugly hag in the last 24 hours since the last time we saw each other, just fiy.”  
  
“Like I said,” she chirps happily, “going off memory.”  
  
She almost drops the flowers, “This isn’t a date, is it? I’ve been invited to my own Comedy Central Roast.”  
  
“Oh honey,” Brigitte tuts as she dances from foot to foot at the door, “you’re the funny one. All the roasting is self-inflicted.”  
  
“Ouch,” she chuckles, “And I’m the funny one? Good to know.”  
  
“Yeah,” her smile is as large as her entire face, “funny looking!”  
  
Hana makes a show of rolling her eyes, “thanks dad. I really needed that one.”  
  
Brigitte makes a face at her, “happy to help son.”

Hana shakes her head, “is this how you start all dates?”  
  
Brigitte shrugs, “I’m trying it out. Is it working?”  
  
Hana snorts and bites her lip, she examines Brigitte in a suit jacket and pair of navy blue slacks. She had on a white button-up with a few buttons popped open and her hair was slicked back into a tight ponytail (tighter than usual).

“I dunno.” Hana trips over herself to say something fun and flirty, “the flowers are one way to get from dad to daddy.”  
  
Brigitte’s eyes are wide, “oh, uh,” Hana realizes her mistake in that moment, her face goes red. Brigitte squints slightly, “Daddy?”  
  
Hana takes a step back, “OH.”  
  
Brigitte’s expression was still slack, “I mean, I can, if you, I mean.”

“Oh no.”

Hana reflects on her own filter: nonexistent. Shaped by xbox live. Going to get her murdered one day. 

She closes the door between them and decides it was best to leave while she still could.

“Wait!” Brigitte knocks again, “Okay, it’s a joke, yeah.” Brigitte rattles the doorknob ever so slightly, “Please let me in.”  
  
Hana leans on the door and groans, “thanks for the flowers. Hana is no longer here, leave a message at the beep.”

“Oh come on,” Brigitte sighs, “it was funny.”  
  
“Beeeeeeeeep.”  
  
“Hana,” it was almost a whine, “I knew what I was getting into. I watched your Cuphead play-through.”  
  
“Say something embarrassing,” Hana says quickly.

“What?”  
  
“Say something embarrassing and I can open the door and continue on with my life. Whatever terrible life it is.”  
  
“Oh my God,” Brigitte thunks her head on the door, “no?”  
  
“Please?” Hana leans on the door too, “So I can live through this.” _Calling your date daddy before anything even starts._ _  
_  
She hears a heavy sigh on the other side, “I once… had a sex dream with, uh.”  
  
Hana stands up straight, “go on.”

Brigitte takes a deep breath, “it’s really not a big deal Hana. You can call me, uh, da-”  
  
“Nope. Continue with your confession.” She clutches the flowers to her chest, “we’ll pray together afterward.”

Brigitte gives a heavy sigh, “the things you do for cute girls.”  
  
“Like have dreams about them?” Hana smirks to herself, “was I in it?”  
  
She sniffs loudly, “that is not yet first date-material conversation.”  
  
“Confessionals have no rules.” She smiles to herself, “bt-dubs, my own ‘special’ dreams may also include a confessional.”  
  
Brigitte laughs through the door, “noted.”  
  
She knocks on the wood, “two knocks for it was with food. Three for a cartoon character, and five knocks if it was a furry. I’m here to listen my child.” 

Brigitte coughs into her hand, “furry? Food? Alright, my confession is going to be pretty disappointing then.”

“Boooo.”  
  
Brigitte clears her throat, “alright,” she says loudly, “to save our first date after you called me daddy.”  
  
“Ah,” she yelps loudly at being reminded.

“I had a dream… of a certain nature… involving,” she takes a deep breath, “have you heard of Moomin?”  
  
“NO,” Hana shrieks, “say it again, omg.”  
  
“Ah, fuck.” Brigitte curses to herself, “can’t we just compliment each other’s outfits and talk about the weather?”  
  
Hana swings the door open, “absolutely not.” She smirks, “Moomin fucker.”

Brigitte pouts momentarily, “I’d rather just be ‘daddy.’” She grumbles and Hana works on not processing any part of that sentence.

Her eyes are bright, “Did she moo during it?”  
  
“What? No, have you even seen the show?”  
  
“I will soon!”

Brigitte takes a deep breath, “Let’s start over.” She puts her hand out, “Good evening Hana.”  
  
Hana stiffens up and she squirms in place, “good evening ma’am. Mrs. Moomin Enthusiast.” She whispers the last part under her breath and Brigitte grips her hand firmly.  
  
She uses her other hand and reaches across the gap between them and tucks a stray piece of hair behind Hana’s ear, “Can I come in?”  
  
Hana suppresses a light shiver and just nods, she glances down at the flowers clutched to her chest, “I should put these in some water.”

Brigitte nods, “I’ll come with.”

Hana turns around stiffly and starts shuffling toward her room, “moo.” She says in a low voice, emphasizing each syllables, “moooo.” She may have made it a little lewd.

Brigitte kicks her heel lightly, “I swear.”  
  
“Oh Brigitte,” she says in a high pitched voice, “milk me.”  
  
Brigitte tugs on her hair, “you really haven’t seen the show.”  
  
Hana shrugs, “I’m making inferences.”  
  
Brigitte puts a hand on the small of her waist and Hana almost jumps completely out of her skin as they stop.

“Alright, funny man.” She points and Hana wants to swallow her whole tongue, she almost passed her own room. “Isn’t this your room?”

“Yeah,” she squeaks and turns to her bedroom. “Sure is.”  
  
She shivers and Brigitte’s fingers linger on her for a second before guiding her into the space. Hana goes fumbling to find something to put the ridiculous amount of flowers in and not reflect on her own hot collar.

She pauses as she feels Brigitte hovering behind her, she glances over her shoulder they both look up at the ceiling and she frowns slightly. They edge around the room and she watches Brigitte rub her hands together and look in both directions.

Hana just places the flowers on her bed and turns around.

“So,” she folds her hands behind her and they don’t make eye contact.

“So,” Brigitte repeats and shuffles forward, her expression tightens, “you chose a place?”  
  
“Yeah,” she nods mechanically, “it’s supposed to be nice. Like, good nice. Like… fine, sort of… nice.” She cringes at herself and feels her entire body stiffen up.

Brigitte rubs the back of her neck, “yeah.”  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
The glance at each for a moment and then look away, Hana’s mouth pinches together.  
  
“Do you wann-” She starts, her shoulders square.

Brigitte steps forward, “Would you like to-”  
  
“Maybe we could-”  
  
“Yeah exactly.”  
  
They talk at once, Hana gives a faint smile.

“Oh, uh, do you want to, I mean-”  
  
“We could-”  
  
“Stay in?”  
  
“We could totally stay in!”

They both exhale at once and a weight feels like it was lifted off Hana’s chest, going out would mean eyes and ears on them. Going out would be pretending it wasn’t a date unless they wanted the newspapers to take out a bite out of them. Going out meant reality.

Plus, well, Hana felt like she didn’t have to hold her breath any more.

Brigitte’s mouth turns up and she gives a little laugh, Hana smiles back and covers her mouth and laughs a little too.

“Good.” Brigitte says roughly, visibly relaxing in front of her.  
  
“Good.”

Hana wrings her hands, “though I guess that’s not much of a date then.”  
  
Brigitte swings her suit jacket off and hangs it off her fingertips, “if you’re okay with it, I am.”  
  
Hana fiddles with her fingers, she tugs her skirt down, “it can just be chillin. Romantically.”  
  
Brigitte snorts, “alright. Let’s hang out. Romantically.”  
  
They smile at each other again. Hana looks away and squirms in place, “I’m totally okay with  that.”  
  
Brigitte nudges her shoulder, “what would you like to do, what do you always say? Dude?”  
  
Hana laughs, “I can order some take out, bro. I know all the good places around here actually- they know me by name and like, all my iconic dirty pajama bottoms.”  
  
Brigitte giggles, “sounds perfect, buddy.”  
  
“What do you feel like? Pal.”  
  
“You choose,” Brigitte flashes her a look, “chum.”  
  
Hana reaches for phone, “you might regret that. I like spicy stuff, guy.”  
  
“Me too!” Brigitte sings, “And I hear you like a challenge, dude.”  
  
Hana leans forward, “We already used dude!”

“Okay,” Brigitte crosses her arms, Okay, fine coworker.”  
  
“Chap.”  
  
“Fellow.”  
  
“Friend.”  
  
Brigitte winks, “honey.”  
  
Hana’s mouth tenses as the word swirls in her head, “punk?”  
  
“Sugar.” Brigitte’s smile is slow and sneaking, slick like a road after rain, “baby. Sweetheart.”  
  
Hana’s mouth goes dry and she looks down at her feet, her face flushes, “asshole.”  
  
Brigitte knocks her on the shoulder again, “wow, I knew you liked me. Wow.”  
  
Hana’s peaks over her long fake eyelashes and her mouth becomes a squiggly line, “darling?”

Brigitte lights up and straightens up, “aw. She _is_ a sap.”  
  
Hana punches her in the side, “double asshole!”

Brigitte chuckles and doesn’t even flinch, “what do you want to do, babe?”  
  
Hana goes dizzy in the head, “you said you liked Mario Kart?”

Brigitte bounces up and down, “yeah! I totally do, it was one of the few games we were allowed to play.”  
  
Hana bites her lip, the girl she was an actual stay-in date with. Actual date-stay-in.

She shifts from foot to foot, “cool.” She rubs her elbow, “the screen is on the floor over there, I’ll call the chicken place now.”  
  
Brigitte tilts her head, “chicken place?”  
  
“Yeah, they’re awesome, I can get beer too.”  
  
Brigitte raises her eyebrows, “You can get beer delivered here?”  
  
Hana tilts her chin up and preens, “you can get anything delivered in Korea.”  


“Great,” Brigitte nods briefly and tucks her stray hair behind her head, “righty.”  
  
Hana snorts and picks up her phone, “righty. Tighty? Dad- you know what, I’m stopping right there.”  
  
Brigitte tosses her head back, “noted.” She passes her, “Sweetheart.”  
  
Hana quickly turns around and starts speed dialling, it takes a second to double her usual order and dance in place, preparing herself to turn around again. Sweetheart.

She was going to die.

She stands up straight, “Dibs on Bowser.”  
  
“Of course,” Brigitte nods as she takes a few steps toward the flat screen TV with the gaming systems surrounding it like an altar. “I’m doing Peach anyway.”  
  
“No,” Hana’s eyes go wide, “ack.”  
  
Brigitte tilts her head to the side, “problem?”  
  
Hana rubs her hands together, “just hours of listening to huh! Cha is a purgatory sort of experience.”  
  
“Hmm,” Brigitte just shrugs, “I like to make most my dates purgatory?”  
  
Hana beams back at her, “Well, you’re in luck, I was never going to heaven anyway. It’s probably an upgrade.”  
  
Brigitte makes a move to sit down, “and where will you end up then Hana Song?”  
  
Hana flips her hair back, “Gamer Hell. If I ever die.” 

Brigitte’s mouth becomes a little ‘o,’ “You? Never.”  
  
Brigitte leans over her, “In this line of work?” She makes a sharp noise, “It’s like I’m immortal.”  
  
Brigitte looks down at her hands and then her expression wilts at the edges, “If I have something to do with it…” She sighs, “we can try.”

Hana nods, curtly, sharply, their eyes linger, old scars stretching slightly, something passes between them. She takes a seat next to her on the floor, a respectable couple handprints between them.

Brigitte leans back on the wall, “so what’s this Gamer Hell?”  
  
Hana turns on her Wii, “Like normal hell, but Kirby is there and takes my soul to the big World of Warcraft server in the sky.”

Brigitte laughs and Hana melts a little bit inside, they put their eyes on the screen.

_________________________

“No,” Hana had chicken grease on her fingertips and she sitting on her second best throw pillow as she cackled and held her sides. “Nooooo.”

“Yes!” Brigitte’s white-button up shirt was loose around her and her eyes were alive with something bright. “Don’t doubt me now, babe.”  
  
Hana shook her head, “alright, alright, the cat did a front flip. You win.”  
  
“It’s the truth! Into my 4th birthday cake.”

Hana gave a sly smile, “are you sure that’s not just what they told you after someone squished the thing on accident?”  
  
Brigitte wrinkles her nose, “I like to think we live in the cat front-flip world and not your very bland reasonable sounding one.”  
  
Hana sat up straight and put her nose high in the air, “that’s me! Perfectly reasonable at all times, totally didn’t eat five spicy chicken breasts in 20 minutes. High-class.”  
  
Brigitte’s leans toward her and her eyes go up and down, “where do you even put it?”  
  
Hana points down, “hint, I’m about to burst a seam in this skirt.”  
  
Brigitte eyes go wide, “go change!”  
  
Hana shrugs, “I’ve popped worst things.”  
  
Brigitte makes a confused her face at her, “like what?”  
  
Hana gestures down, “like this p-”  
  
“Are you going to say pussy?” 

“Like this pussy!”

Brigitte elegantly rolled her eyes in a large circle, but she was still smiling, “go change, you’re ridiculous.”  
  
Hana goes to crawl back to her feet, “I’m changing into my best sweatpants, no worries.”  
  
Brigitte hums, “as long as you’re comfortable, honestly.” 

Hana doesn’t look back as she tries to hide her cluttered stuffed closet as she riffles through her clothes heap, “they’re purple. It’ll be sexy, don’t worry, my sexiest sweatpants.”  
  
She could hear Brigitte huff slightly, “I’ll be sure to wolf-whistle.”  
  
Hana looks sharply over her shoulder, “that’s all I ask.”  
  
They share a look that lasts a few seconds too long. Hana darts into the adjoining bathroom to tear her uncomfortable sticky skirt off. “You got this.” She takes deep, frantic breaths and doesn’t examine herself in the mirror.

She takes that moment to tear off her ridiculous fake eyelashes and pinch her cheeks again, “you got this.”  
  
She heard Brigitte humming to herself in the next room and Hana closes her eyes, she imagines it, she feels it, she plays the image over and over in her head. So this was a date. People could do things on dates.

She breathes in every inch of the thought, soaking it in.

She swings the door open and Brigitte swiftly looks over to her, a curious expression on her face, Hana takes a deep breath. Her thoughts start spilling out anyway.

She juts her chin out, “You wanna watch a movie?”  
  
Brigitte cracks another smile, “Yeah, of course, whatever you like.” 

Hana squares her shoulders, “or we could play a board game.”  
  
Brigitte leans back on the pillow behind her, “Anything, really.”

“Or, I dunno, we could make fun of Hammond online or fly around in my MEKA.”  
  
Brigitte scans her quickly, “what’s this about?”  
  
Hana bites her lip and almost dances in a circle again, “I just want… you to have a good time?” She tries a pinched smile, “I told you. I might puke.”  
  
Brigitte sits up straight, “I’m having a lovely time, honestly, we could just lie on the floor and you could sing Lucio’s last single to me and I’d be happy.”  
  
“I can’t sing.”  
  
“I’ve heard.”  
  
Hana’s shoulders release and she meets her eyes, “you’re cool? Really? Because my mom says the sky will fall when I actually date.”  
  
Brigitte quietly opens her mouth and then closes it, she puts her hand out and opens her palm, “this is an actual date.” She says firmly.

Hana rubs the back of her neck, “like, date date? You won’t be mad we just played video games and ate take-out?” She wilts around the edges.

Brigitte lifts her chin up, she raises her hand, “Come ‘ere.”  
  
Hana lifts her eyebrows, “where?”  
  
Brigitte pats her knees, “here.”  
  
Hana pauses, “like uh, there?” She examines her lap and her whole world slows to a crawl. “There there?”  
  
“Unless it’s too much for a first date,” Brigitte was flushing now too, “I just, don’t want you to feel I’m doing the dumb friend thing? So,” she goes deep red, “only if you want.”  
  
She glances at her lap and then back to her face, “I-I, yeah.” Hana felt like she was playing a very dense version of telephone where you have to yell what you want to the other person through a tin can.

She shuffles, she patters, she muddles, she scuffles across the room, her purple sweatpants sag and the whole world spins. She looks down as Brigitte moves her legs and settled down- so she could sit. On her lap.

This was happening in some timeline Hana couldn't even hope for.

Hana takes a deep breath and she moves slowly, ever so slowly, “I,” she mouths the words as she inches down, “I like this.” Her voice is faint and everything prickling, from her fingertips to every hair on her body.

Brigitte tugs her around the waist and Hana falls into her, they both grunt softly and Brigitte has to wiggle her arm free as Hana traps it underneath her and wobbles in place.

“Fuck.” She curses and tries to right herself.

Brigitte laughs, “We’re bad at this.”  
  
“Want me to try another moon landing ma’am?”  
  
Brigitte shakes her head and then puts her arms around her shoulders, pulling her closer and situating her in the dip of her hips. She curls up around Hana and her hot skin presses against her back and arms.

Hana is suddenly very self-conscious of how bony she was, how lumpy she was, how much she was, but she starts to melt, arms around her, chest pressed against her back. Brigitte presses her nose into her hair and inhales.

She closes her eyes and lets everything stop.

Melt. Like ice cream on a summer day, like winter ice into spring puddles, like the sun into a sprinkle of light and light and light. She shivers from head to foot and her thoughts stop, for just a moment, they’re off.

“Oh,” she murmurs softly and Brigitte squeezes her gently.

They exhale together and Hana unclenches, letting herself relax into her. Brigitte rubs her shoulder, “so,” she brushes Hana’s hair aside, “how about that movie?”  
  
She just mutely nods back, and maybe this was it. This is how she she would go, in a pretty girls lap for the first time in her life.

She closes her eyes and tilts her head to the side, “I’d love to,” she takes a deep breath, “baby.”  
  
She feels a tight squeeze around her and she swears a faint kiss on the side of her head. It was real.

__________________________

Hana was warm and comfortable, reclining against something soft, real, she takes a few minutes to process her light sleep and to blink her eyes open. She makes out a fuzzy noise in the background, a clock blinks to her left, she glances at it.

It was almost 2am, she yawns widely and feels like a well-fed house cat- safe, sleepy, claws retracted.

“Ah,” she hears a soft sound next to her ear, “you’re awake.”

Hana blinks her eyes a couple times and turns slowly toward the noise, “Brigitte,” she rubs her crusty eyes again.

“Here.” Brigitte was still wrapped around her, chest propped up against her Hana’s back, Hana tilts her head up and wonders what kind of dream ended like this, it must be the best sort.

She looks down, thick thighs in blue slacks cushioned underneath her, she glances up, “Are your legs asleep?”  
  
Brigitte shrugs, “A little.”  
  
“My bad,” Hana shifts in place and adjusts herself, “did you sleep?”  
  
Brigitte just shakes her head, “the movie had like seven explosions in it.”  
  
Hana gives a weak smile, “I’m used to explosions.”  
  
Brigitte gives a deep sigh, “I know.”  
  
She adjusts herself and turns around in her lap, their eyes meet, careening together in the dark. Hana extends her neck and rubs her weary eyes again, “Am I winning?”  
  
Brigitte cracks a half-smile, “Do you want to win?”  
  
Her lips part and arches herself up, “always.”  
  
Brigitte leans forward and rests her forehead on Hana’s shoulder, close, touching, they breath in together. Brigitte’s chest vibrates as she chuckles, “well, you already destroyed me at Mario Kart.”  
  
Hana grins and places her arms on Brigitte’s broad shoulders, “Damn right I did.”  
  
Brigitte shakes her head, “the queen of games, and me, Icarus on the wings of hope, flying too high.”  
  
“A poet!”  
  
“A loser,” she says with a light in her eyes.

Hana pauses and she opens her mouth, thinking for a long moment, “I think you’re pretty cool.” She finally says in a small voice.

Brigitte lifts her head up, “am I winning then?”  
  
Hana’s insides almost collapse, her fingers twitch and she lets the blur of the TV fade behind her, _yes._ She wants to scream, but she wasn’t very good at bad truths or honest reveals.

She taps their foreheads together and inhales.

“Do you want to win?”  
  
Brigitte straightens her back and they eye each other, something light and painful passes between them. Not pain like a stubbed toe or broken arm, something that snaked and wove itself into her insides. And constricted.

She glances down at Brigitte’s mouth and then fearfully back at her eyes, Brigitte reaches for her.

She moves like a glacier, like a falling leaf on a light breeze, like a dew drop down down down a glass windowsill. Slow, lost in thought, lost.

Hana wants to run. Hana wants to leap, Hana’s knuckles bleach as she clutches at nothing and she felt like crying.

Every bit of her lights up like a firecracker and she wants it all so bad it burns, more than titles or better merch or new Zelda games. She shudders and pushes into a soft, heartbreak, kiss. Her senses flush and surge through her, every bit of her ignites.

A mouth is soft and firm against hers.

If the world was to ever shift, if it was to erase the battle scars across Russia, close the blood dark waters of the Korean ocean, if it was to take the bullet out of martyrs heads and give second chances to the sinner.

If it could rebuild the burnt cities, restore the wicked and bring justice to the screws and wires of the long dead.

Take the oil from the soaked soil and clean the battles fields of rust and old family photos their owners will never see again, if it was to tear down the factory and try again. If it was to wash the world with a hope, a hope so high and breathless that it burst.

This would be it. Hana was sure, this would shift the axis of the planet and the whole system would rearrange itself.

This was it.

She kisses so soft she’s afraid it might break her, a taste of heat and a gentle touch, Brigitte kisses her with a delicateness that threatened to overwhelm her.

She feels the fear run rickshaw around her core, but it mutes, a TV volume put on low, brushed aside by a soft sigh, a moment. It was warm and lovely, it gripped her and took her down down down.

Hana collapses into the other girl and they dive into a hot, full kiss that sends her spinning, grappling, lost. She kisses back with the force of a small jackhammer, she wraps her arms around Brigitte’s neck and Brigitte’s hands grasp at her back of her shirt and dig in.

They kiss like they always meant to.

“Babe,” Brigitte whispers into her parted lips, “Hana.”  
  
Hana wraps her legs around her torso and presses them together, she rasps into her ear, “I’m here.” She closes her eyes, “don’t stop.”  
  
They come together and Hana is so glad she waited all these years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and that's all she wrote!!
> 
> Epilogue or bonus chapter coming soon

**Author's Note:**

> hey! This was going to be a one-shot but I had such a good time writing it that I’m expanding the story for more
> 
> support is appreciated!


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